
\/ 




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* 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 



ONE SUMMER 

"Little Classic" style. $1.25. 



" A very charming story i? 'One Summer.' Even the 
word 'charming' hardly expresses with sufficient emphasis 
the pleasure we have taken in reading it ; it is simply de- 
lightful, unique in method and manner, and with a pecul- 
iarly piquant flavor of humorous observation." — Apple- 
ton's Journal. 



JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO., 

Publishers, Boston. 



ONE YEAR ABROAD 



Y>\ 



THE AUTHOR OF "ONE SUMMER." 
.Vie. WlU\4 <V(OYy a.v<L"| VOY\ V- 



"0 rare, rare Earth !" 

" Iron is essentially the same everywhere and always, but the sulphate of iron 
is never the same as the carbonate of iron. Truth is invariable, but the Smithate 
of truth must always differ from the Bromate of truth." — Autocrat of the Break- 
fast-Table. 




BOSTON : 
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 

I-ate Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 
1877. 

Cft* 



THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 

WASHINGTON 



Copyright, 1877. 
By JAMES It. OSGOOD & CO. 






University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 
Cambridge. 



CONTENTS 



Page 
Hamburg at a First Glance 1 

Heidelberg in Winter 12 

A Flying Sheet from Paris 24 

Baden-Baden 32 

Rambles about Stuttgart 44 

The Solitude 55 

A Day in the Black Forest 63 

The Lenninger Thal 09 

Franciska von Hohenheim 77 

"Nuremberg the Ancient" .... 85 

Some Wurtembebg Towns . . . . .91 

In a Garden ....... 95 

LlNDAU AND BREGENZ 100 

The Vorarlberg 106 

In the Tyrol 115 

Innsbruck 121 

IIohenschwangau and Neu Schwanstein . . 127 



VI CONTENTS. 

Life in Schattwald 137 

Up the Airy Mountain 145 

The Engadine 154 

Ragatz 101 

A Flying Trip to the Rhine Falls . . 168 

Down from the High Alps 175 

By the Lake of Lucerne 182 

Up and on and down the Rigi .... 187 

A Kaiser Fest 194 

The Cannstadt Volksfest 203 

In a Vineyard 211 

Among Freiligrath's Books . . . . . 218 

Three Funerals 225 

Some Christmas Pictures 232 

Hamburg again 239 




OWE YEAR ABROAD 



HAMBURG AT A FIRST GLANCE. 




HERE is a wild, fantastic poem, thronged 
with more phantoms, goblins, and horrors 
than are the legends of the Blockberg. 
It narrates in singularly vivid style the 
deeds of a frightful fiend, and is, believe me, a 
truly remarkable work. I beg you will not scorn 
it because it exists only in the brain which it en- 
tered one stormy night at sea. There it reigned, 
triumphant, through long sleepless hours ; but 
for certain reasons — which are, by the way, per- 
fectly satisfactory to my own mind — it will never 
be committed to paper. Its title is "The Screw," 
— the screw of an ocean steamer. 

Christmas is the best wishing-time in the year. 
One can wish and wish at Christmas, and what 
harm does it do ] So I will wish my poem all 
written in stately, melodious measure, yet with 
thoughts that w T ould make your cheek pale, and 
your very soul shudder ; and then — since wish- 
ing is so easy — I will wish that I were an inti- 
mate friend of Gustave Dore, to whom I would 
take my masterpiece to be illustrated ; and I 



2 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

would beg him to allow his genius for drawing 
awful things full sway, and I would implore him 
not to withhold one magic touch that might sug- 
gest another horror, so that extending from the 
central object — the terrible Screw — there should 
be demons reaching for their prey, howling and 
laughing in fiendish glee. Then I would say, 
" More, more, my good M. Dore ! — more hideous 
faces, more leering phantoms, more writhing legs 
and arms, please ! " For perhaps Dore never crossed 
the ocean in bad weather ; perhaps he never occu- 
pied a state-room directly over the Screw ; perhaps 
he never experienced the sensation of lying there 
in sleepless, helpless, hopeless agony, clinging fran- 
tically to the side of his berth, hearing the clank 
of chains, the creaking of timbers, the rattling of 
the shrouds, the waves sweeping the deck over his 
head, — most of all, the Evil Screw beneath, ram- 
pant and threatening. It may be Dore does not 
know how it feels when that Screw rises up in 
wrath, takes the steamer in his teeth and shakes 
it, then plunges deep, deep in the waves ; while 
all the demons, great and small, stretching their 
uncanny arms towards the state-rocms, shriek, 
"We'll get them ! We'll have them !" and the 
winds and waves in hoarse chorus respond, "They '11 
have them — have them — have them ! " and again 
uprises the Screw and shakes himself and the trem- 
bling steamer. So through the night, and many 
nights, alas ! 

And yet, Screw ! thing of evil, thing of 
might, I humbly thank you that you ceased at 
last your terrible thumps, your jarrings and wicked 



HA MB URG AT A FIRS T GLA N CE. 3 

whirls, — and silenced your chorus of attendant 
demons, with their turnings and twistings and 
mad laughter ; I thank you that you did not get 
us ! Truly, I believed you would. I thank you 
that you did not choose to keep us miserable souls 
wandering forevermore through the shoreless deep, 
or to sink us, as the phantom-ship sinks in " Der 
Fliegender Hollander," amid sulphurous fumes and 
discordant sounds, do'wn to that lurid abyss from 
which you came. 

Do you all at home know this legend of the 
Flying Dutchman'? At least, do you know it as 
Wagner gives it to the world, in words as lovely 
as its melodies 1 The music is worth hearing, and 
the story well worth a little thought. But per- 
haps you know it already 1 Because, if you do, 
of course I shall not tell it, and in that case we 
need not sail off in strange crafts for the wild 
Norway coast, but will only steam safely up the 
Elbe to Hamburg. 

There are travellers from the Western World 
who, after months of sight-seeing, return home 
weary and disappointed because they have never 
once been able to "realize that they were in Eu- 
rope." Not realize ! Not know ! Not feel with 
every fibre that one has come from the New to 
the Old ! Why, the very lights of Hamburg gleam- 
ing through the rain and darkness, as we cold and 
wet voyagers at last drew near our haven, even 
while they gave us friendly greeting, told us un- 
mistakably that their welcome was shining out 
from a strange land, from homes unlike the homes 
we had left behind. 



4 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

Dear people who never "realize" that it is 
" Europe," who never feel what you expected to 
feel, ma} 7 one less experienced in travel than your- 
selves venture to tell you that it is that fatal 
thing, the guide-book, that weighs you down ? ]Sot 
total abstinence in this respect, but moderation, 
would I preach. Too much guide-book makes 
you know far too well what to do, where to go, 
how long to stay. It leaves nothing to imagina- 
tion, to enthusiasm, to the whim of the moment. 
Dear guide-book people, don't know T so much, don't 
calculate so much, don't measure and weigh and 
test everything ! Don't speak so much to what 
you see, and then what you see will speak more 
to you. Even here in old Hamburg, the haughty 
free city of commerce, the rich city boasting of her 
noble port filled with ships from every land. — 
proud of her wealth, her strength, her merchants, 
and her warehouses, — looking well after her duc- 
ats, caring much for her dinner, plainly telling 
you she is of a prosaic nature, leaving tales of love 
and chivalry to the more romantic South, — even 
here the air is full of subtle intangible influences, 
that will move you deeply if you will but receive 
them. A city a thousand years old must have 
something to say of far-off times and of the living 
present, if one has ears to hear. 

Stand on the heights by the river and look 
down on all the noble ships at anchor there. The 
old windmill turns lazily before you. The flag on 
a building near by moves softly in the breeze. 
The tender, hazy, late-autumn day, kind to all 
things, beautifies even bare trees and withered 



HAMBURG AT A FIRST GLANCE. 5 

grass. A large-eyed boy, his school-books under 
his arm, stares curiously at you, then longingly 
looks at the water and the great ships. The pic- 
ture has its meaning, which you may breathe in, 
drink in if you will, but you will never find it if 
you are comparing your "Appleton" with your 
" Baedecker," or estimating the number of square 
feet in the grass-plot where you stand, or looking 
hard at the ugly "Sailors' Asylum" because you 
may be so directed, and refusing to see my pretty 
boy with the wistful eyes because he 's not men- 
tioned in the guide-book. 

Everywhere are little stories, pictures, glimpses 
of other people's lives, waiting for you. The 
flower-girl at the street-corner holds out a bunch 
of violets as you pass. Pale, thinly clad, she 
stands there shivering in the cold November wind. 
On you go. The shops are large and brilliant, the 
people seem for a time like those in any large 
city. You think you might as well be in New 
York, when suddenly you see, walking tranquilly 
along, a peasant-woman in the costume of her 
district, — short, bright gown, bodice square and 
high, with full white sleeves and a red kerchief 
round her shoulders, and on her head the most cu- 
rious object, a thing that looks like a skullcap, 
with a flaring black bow, as large as your two hands, 
at the back, from which hangs her hair in two long 
braids. Sometimes there is also a hat which re- 
sembles a shallow, inverted flat basket. Why it 
stays iu place instead of wabbling about as it 
might reasonably be expected to do, and whether 
there is any hidden connection between it and 



(3 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

that extraordinary black bow, are mysteries to me, 
though I peered under the edge of the basket hat 
of one Vierlanderin with great pertinacity. 

The Hamburg maid-servants also wear a pre- 
scribed costume. A casement high above you 
swings open and discloses a little figure standing 
in the narrow window. A blond head, with a 
white bit of a cap on it, leans out. You catch 
a glimpse of a great white apron, and of a neat, 
sensible, dark cotton gown, made with a short 
puffed sleeve which leaves the arm bare and free 
for work. You wonder why the girl looks so long 
up and down the busy street, and what she hopes 
to see. To be sure, it may be only Bridget look- 
ing for Patrick, or, worse, Bridget thinking of 
nothing in particular ; simply idling away her 
time, instead of sweeping the garret. But if her 
name is perhaps Hannchen, and she looks from a 
window, narrow and high, and the morning sun- 
shine touches her yellow braids, and she stands 
so still, far above the hurrying feet on the pave- 
ment, how can one help finding her more interest- 
ing, as a bit of human nature to study and enjoy, 
than a beflounced and beribboned Bridget at home'? 
And when, in her simple dress, well suited to 
her degree, she runs about the streets on her 
mistress's errands, carrying many a parcel in her 
strong round arms, she is a pleasant thing to see, 
and, because she does not ape the fine lady, loses 
nothing when by chance she walks by the side of 
one in silk attire. 

Ah ! if one has ever groaned in spirit to see the 
tawny daughters of the Penobscot Indians, those 



HAMBURG AT A FIRST GLANCE. 7 

dusky maidens who might, in reason, be expected 
to bring into a prosaic town some wildwood grace, 
some suggestion of " the curling smoke of wig- 
wams," of "the dew and damp of meadows," 
selling their baskets from door. to door in gowns 
actually cut after a recent Godey fashion-plate, 
much looped as to overskirt, much ruffled and 
puffed and shirred, — then indeed must one rejoice 
in the dress of the Hamburg maids, and in these 
sturdy country-women trudging along in their pic- 
turesque but substantial costume, to sell their 
fruit and vegetables in the city markets. 

In the olden time the good wives of Hamburg 
no doubt wore such gowns. One sees now in the 
street called Grosse Bleichen great buildings, 
banks and shops, and all the evidences of busy 
modern life ; but one shuts the eyes and sees in- 
stead groups of women in blue and red, coming 
out from the city walls to lay on the green grass 
the linen they have spun, that it may whiten in 
the sunshine. They spun, and wove, and bleached. 
They lived and died. The growing city built new 
walls, and took within its limits those green banks 
once beyond its gates. The women knew not 
what was to be, when their spinning was all done. 
Nor did the maids, whose busy feet trod the path 
by the river-side, dream that the Jungfernstieg, or 
Maiden's Path, would be the name, hundreds of 
years after, of the most-frequented promenade of 
the gay world of a great city. 

Those women with the spinning-wheels, silent 
now so long, the } r oung maids with their water- 
jars, chatting together in the early morning by 



g ONE YEAR ABROAD. • 

the river, still speak to us, if we but listen. 
Though the voices of the city are so loud, we can 
hear quite well what they tell us ; but indeed, 
indeed, dear friends, it is not written in the guide- 
book. 

Stories everywhere, did I not say % Why, I 
even found one imbedded in — candy! 

Listen, children, while 1 tell you about marzi- 
pan. The grown people need not hear, if they do 
not wish. 

Marzipan (or St. Mark's bread — marci panis) 
is the name of a dainty which is made into bon- 
bons of every shape and size and color imagin- 
able ; all, however, having the same flavor, tast- 
ing of sugar and vanilla and rose-water and 
almonds, and I know not what beside. There are 
tiny potatoes, dark and gray, with marvellous 
u eyes," that would delight your souls ; there are 
grapes, and nuts, and large, red apples, all made 
from the delectable marzipan. And most particu- 
larly there are little round loaves, an inch long, 
perhaps, which are the original celebrated marzi- 
pan, pure and simple, the other form being modern 
innovations. And why Mark's bread ] Because, 
my dears, there was once a famine in Liibeck, and 
tradition saith that the loaf which each poor wo- 
man took from the baker to her starving bairns 
grew each day smaller and smaller, until finally 
it was such a poor wee thing it was no more than 
an inch long ; and on St. Mark's Day was the 
famine commemorated, while the shape and size 
of the pitiful loaves are preserved in this sweet- 



HAMBURG AT A FIRST GLANCE. 9 

meat, peculiar, I believe, to North Germany. 
Hamburg children — bless them! — will tell you 
the tale of famine, and swallow the tiny loaves as 
merrily as though there was never a hungry child 
in the world. 

Hamburg children ! Indeed, I have reason to 
bless them. Shall I not always be grateful to the 
fate that showed to eyes weary with gazing upon 
wet decks, dense fog, and the listless faces of 
fellow-voyagers, a bright and beautiful vision 1 
Most travellers in Hamburg visit first the Zoolog- 
ical Gardens, and then immediately after — is it 
to observe the contrast or the similarity between 
the lower animals and noble man] — the Exchange 
or Borse, where they look down from a gallery 
upon hundreds, thousands of busy men, whose 
voices rise in one incessant, strange, indescribable 
noise — hum — roar — call it what you will. 
Neither of these spectacles, happily, was thrust 
at once before me. Did I not interpret as a 
happy omen that my first " sight " was twenty 
little German children dancing % 

Can I ever forget those delicious shy looks at 
the queer stranger who has suddenly loomed up 
in the midst of their festivities % And the care- 
fully prepared speech of the small daughter of the 
house who with blushes and falterings, much 
laughter, many promptings, and several false 
starts, finally chirps like a bird, trying to speak 
English, "I am va-ry happy to zee you," and for 
the feat receives the felicitations of her friends, 
and retires in triumph to her bonbons. 

»Swe3test of all was the gracious yet timid way 



20 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

in which each child, in making her early adieus, 
gave her hand to the stranger also, as an impera- 
tive courtesy. 

Each little maid draws up her dainty dancing- 
boots heel to heel, extends for an instant her small 
gloved hand, speaks no word except with the shy 
sweet eyes, gravely inclines her head, and is gone, 
giving place to the next, who goes through the 
same solemn form. 

Dear little children at home, you are as dear and 
sweet as these small German girls — dearer and 
sweeter, shall I not say] — but would you, could you, 
prompted only by your own good manners, march 
up to a corner where sits a great, big, entirely 
grown-up person from over the. sea, and stand be- 
fore her, demure and quaint and stately, and make 
your stiff and pretty little bows 1 Would you now, 
you tiniest ones ] Keally 1 

Yet, do you know, if you would, of your own 
free will, without mamma visible in the back- 
ground exhorting and encouraging, you would do 
a graceful thing, a courteous and a kindly thing, 
in thus including the dread stranger within your 
charmed circle, and in welcoming her from your 
child-heart and with your child-hands. You would 
be telling her, all so silently, that though her home 
is far aw r ay, she has her place among you ; that 
kindness and warmth and free-hearted hospitality 
one finds the wide world over. And your pretty 
heads, bending seriously before her, and your de- 
mure, absurd, sweet, pursed-up baby-mouths might 
conjure up visions of curly gold locks, and soft 
dimpled faces far off in her home country, and she 



HAMBURG AT A FIRST GLANCE. H 

would — why, children, children, I cannot say what 
she would do ! I cannot tell all that she would 
think and feel. But this I know well, she would 
love you and your dear little, frightened, welcom- 
ing hands, and she would say, with her whole heart, 
as I say now, — 

"Merry, merry Christmas, and 'God bless us 
every one ! ' " 




HEIDELBERG IN WINTER. 




F you come to Heidelberg you will never 
want to go away," says Mr. Warner in his 
"Saunterings." It was in summer that 
he said it. He had wandered everywhere 
over the lovely hills. He knew this quaintest of 
quaint towns by heart. He had studied the beau- 
tiful ruin in the sunshine and by moonlight, and 
had listened amid the fragrance and warmth of a 
midsummer night to the music of the band in the 
castle grounds, and to the nightingales. I, who 
have only seen Heidelberg in the depth of winter, 
with gray skies above and snow below, echo his 
words again and again. 

" Don't go to Heidelberg in winter. Don't think 
of it. It's so stupid. There is nothing there 
now, positively nothing. 0, don't ! " declared the 
friends in council at Hamburg. When one's friends 
shriek in a vehement chorus, and " 0, don't ! " at 
one, it is usually wise to listen with scrupulous 
attention to everything which they say, and then 
to do precisely what seems good in one's own 
eyes. I listened, I came immediately to Heidel- 
berg in winter, and now I "never* want to go 
away." 



HEIDELBERG IN WINTER. ^3 

And why 1 Indeed, it is not easy to say where 
the fascination of the place lies. Everybody 
knows how Heidelberg looks. We all have it in 
our photograph albums, — long, narrow, irregular, 
outstretched between the hills and the Neckar. 
And all our lives we have seen the castle imprinted 
upon paper-knives and upon china cups that say 
Friendship's Offering, in gilt letters, on the other 
side. But in some way the queer houses, — some 
of solid stone, yellow and gray, some so high, with 
pointed roofs, some so small, with the oddest little 
casements and heavy iron-barred shutters, and the 
inevitable bird-cage and pot of flowers in the win- 
dow, quite like the pictures, — in some way these 
old houses seem different from the photographs. 
And when one passes up through steep, narrow, 
paved alleys lined with them, and sees bareheaded 
fat babies rolling about on the rough pavement, 
and the mothers quite unconcerned standing in the 
doorways, and small boys running and sliding on 
their feet, as our boys do, laughing hilariously and 
jeering, as our boys also do, — why will they 1 
— when the smallest falls heavily and goes limp- 
ing and screaming to his home, — one is filled with 
amazement at the half-strange, half-familiar aspect 
of things, and wonders if it be really one's own 
self walking about among the picture houses. And 
as to the castle, I never want to see it again on a 
paper-weight or a card-receiver. 

There 's nothing here in winter, they say. I 
suppose there is not much that every one would 
care for. It is the quietest, sleepiest place in the 
world. It pretends to have twenty thousand in- 



14 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

habitants, but, privately, I don't believe it, for it 
is impossible to imagine where all the people keep 
themselves, one meets so few. 

No, there 's not much here, perhaps ; but cer- 
tainly whatever there is has an irresistible charm 
for one who is neither too elegant nor too wise to 
saunter about the streets, gazing at everything with 
delicious curiosity. Blessed are they who can en- 
joy small things. 

A solemn-looking professor passes ; then a Rus- 
sian lady wrapped in fur from her head to her feet. 
Some dark-eyed laborers stand near by talking in 
their soft, sweet Italian. The shops on the Haup- 
strasse are brilliantly tempting with their Christ- 
mas display. Poor little girls with shawls over 
their heads press their cold noses against the broad 
window-panes, and eagerly "choose" what they 
would like. One stands with them listening in 
sympathy, and in the same harmless fashion chooses 
carved ivory and frosted silver of rare and exqui- 
site design for a score of friends. 

Dear little bo} 7 at home, — yes, it is you w r hom 
I mean ! — what would you say to an imposing 
phalanx of toy soldiers, headed by the emperor, the 
crown prince, Bismarck, and Von Moltke all riding 
abreast in gorgeous uniforms'? That is what I 
" choose " for you, my dear. And did you know, 
by the way, that here in Germany Santa Claus 
doesn't come down the chimneys and fill the chil- 
dren's stockings, and bring the Christmas-tree, but 
that it is the Christ-child who comes instead, rid- 
ing upon a tiny donkey, and the children put wisps 
of hay at their doors, that the donkey may not get 
hungry while the Christ-child makes his visits. 



HEIDELBERG IN WINTER. \§ 

Many women walk through the streets carrying 
great baskets on their heads. Tiiis custom seems 
to some travellers an evil. The women look too 
much, they say, like baasts of burden. But if a 
washerwoman has a great basket of clothes to 
carry home, and prefers to balance it upon her 
head instead of taking it in her hands, why may 
she not, provided she knows how ] And it is by 
no means an easy thing to do, as you would be 
willing to admit if you had walked, or tried to 
walk, about your room with your unabridged dic- 
tionary borne aloft in a similar manner. These 
women wear little flat cushions, upon which the 
baskets rest. Those women I have seen looked 
well and strong and cheerful, and walked with a 
firm, free step, swinging their arms with great aban- 
don. Three such women on a street-corner en- 
gaged in a morning chat were an interesting spec- 
tacle. One carried cabbages of various hues, 
heaped up artistically in the form of a pyramid. 
The huge circumference of their baskets kept them 
at a somewhat ceremonious distance from one an- 
other, but they exchanged the compliments of the 
season in the most kindly and intimate way, and 
their freedom of gesticulation and beautiful uncon- 
cern as to the mountains on their heads were really 
edifying. 

I have not as yet been grieved and exas- 
perated by the sight of a woman harnessed to 
a cart. One, apparently very heavily laden, I 
did see drawn by a man and two stalwart sons, 
while the wife and mother walked behind, push- 
ing. As she was necessarily out of sight of her 



1(3 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

liege lord, the amount of work she might do de- 
pended entirely upon her own volition, and she 
could push or only pretend to push, as she pleased ; 
or even, if the wicked idea should occur to her, 
going up a steep hill she might quietly pull in- 
stead of push, and so ascend with ease. The wdiole 
arrangement struck me as in every respect a truly 
admirable and most uncommon division of family 
labor. 

We meet of course everywhere groups of stu- 
dents with their dainty little canes, their caps of 
blue or red or gold or white, and their altogether 
jaunty aspect. The white-capped young men are 
of noble birth. Some of them w r ear, in addition 
to their white caps, ornaments of white court- 
plaster upon their cheeks and noses, as memorials 
of recent strife with some plebeian foe. To repub- 
lican eyes they are no better looking than their 
fellows, and it may be said that few of these scho- 
lastic young gentlemen, titled or otherwise, who in 
knots of three or five or more, accompanied by 
great dogs, often blockade the extremely narrow 
pavement, manifest their pleasing alacrity in gal- 
lantly scattering, and in giving place aux dames 
as might be desired. 

It has been snowing persistently of late. More 
snow has fallen than Heidelberg has seen in many 
years, and the students have indulged in unlimited 
sleighing. The Heidelberg sleigh is an indescrib- 
able object. Its profile, if one may so speak, 
looks like a huge, red, decapitated swan. It has 
two seats, and is dragged by two ponderous horses 
with measured tread and slow, while the driver 



HEIDELBERG IN WINTER. tf 

clings in a marvellous way to the back of the 
equipage, incessantly brandishing an enormously 
long whip. Sometimes a long line of these sleighs 
is seen, in each of which are four students starting 
out for a pleasure-trip. The young men fold their 
arms and lean back in an impressive manner. 
Their coquettish caps are even more expressive 
than usual. The curious thing is, that, apart from 
the evidence of our senses, they seem to be dashing 
along with the utmost rapidity. There is some- 
thing in the intrepid bearing of the students, in 
the vociferations and loud whip-crackings of the 
driver, that suggests dangerous speed. On the 
contrary the elephantine steeds jog stolidly on, 
quite unmoved by the constant din ; the students 
continue to w r ear their adventurous, peril-seeking 
air, and the undaunted man behind valiantly 
cracks his whip. 

The contrast between the rate at which they go 
and the rate at which they seem to imagine that 
they are going is most comical. The heart is 
moved with pity for the benighted young men who 
do not know what sleighing is, and one would like 
to send home for a few superior American sleighs 
as rewards of merit for good boys at the university. 

The thing with the least warmth and Christian 
kindness about it in Heidelberg is the stove. 
There may be stoves here that have some con- 
scientious appreciation of the grave responsibilities 
devolving upon them in bitter cold weather, but 
such have not come within the range of my obser- 
vation. 

My idea of a Heidelberg stove is a brown, terra- 



23 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

cotta, lukewarm piece of furniture, upon which one 
leans, — literally with nonchalance, — while listen- 
ing to attacks upon American customs and man- 
ners from representatives of the Swiss and German 
nations. The tall white porcelain stoves which 
somebody calls " family monuments," are at least 
agreeable to the eye. But these are neither orna- 
mental nor wholly ugly, neither tall nor short, 
white nor black, hot nor cold. They have neither 
virtues nor vices. We feel only scorn for the 
hopeless incapacity of a stove that cannot at any 
period of its career burn our fingers. It is, as a 
stove, a total failure, and it makes but an indiffer- 
ently good elbow-rest. 

However deficient in blind adoration for our 
fatherland we may have been at home, it only 
needs a few weeks' absence from it, during which 
time we hear it constantly ridiculed and traduced, 
to make us fairly bristle with patriotism. 

It is marvellous how like boastful children sen- 
sible people will sometimes talk when a chance 
remark has transformed a playful, friendly com- 
parison of the customs of different nations into h, 
war of words. Often one is reminded of the story 
of the two small boys, each of whom was striving 
manfully to sustain the honor of his family. 

" We 've got a sewing-machine. " 

" We 've got a pianner." 

" My mother's got a plaid shawl." 

" My sister 's got a new bonnet." 

" We've got lightning-rods on our house." 

" We 've got a mortgage on ours ! " 

For instance : — 



HEIDELBERG IN WINTER. }g 

"You have in America no really old stories and 
traditions'?" said a German lady to an American. 

" We are too young for such things. But what 
does it matter] We enjoy yours," was the civil 
response. 

" But," the German continued, in a tone of com- 
miseration, "no fairy-stories like ours of the Black 
Forest, no legends like ours of the Blockberg ! 
Isn't everything very new and prosaic V 

This superiority is not to be endured. The 
American feels that her country's honor is im- 
peached. 

" AVe have no such legends," she begins slowly, 
when a blessed inspiration comes to her relief, and 
she goes on with dignity, — " we have no such 
legends, to be sure ; but then, you know, we have 
— the Indians." 

"Ah, yes; that is true," said the German, re- 
spectfully, knowing as much of the Indians as of 
the inhabitants of some remote planet, while the 
American, trusting the vague, mysterious term 
will induce a change of subject, yet not knowing 
what may come, rapidly revolves in her mind every 
item of Indian lore she has ever known, from Poca- 
hontas to Young-Man- Afraid-of-h is- Horses, deter- 
mined, should she be called upon to tell a wild 
Indian tale, to do it in a manner that will not 
disgrace the stars and stripes. 

But I grieve to say that America is not always 
victorious. Our table-talk, upon whatever subject 
it may begin, invariably ends in a controversy, 
more or less earnest, about the merits of the sev- 
eral nations represented. 



20 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

A Swiss student with strong French sympathies 
charges valiantly at three Germans, and having 
routed their entire army, heaped all manner of 
abuse upon Kaiser Wilhelm, reduced the crown 
prince to beggary, and beheaded Bismarck, sud- 
denly turns, elated with his victory, and hurls his 
missiles at the American eagle. 

0, how we suffer for our country ! 

Some sarcasm from our student neighbor calls 
forth from us, — 

" America is the hope of the ages." 

We think this sounds well. We remember we 
heard a Fourth-of-July orator say it. Then it is 
not too long for us to attempt, with our small 
command of the German tongue. 

"A forlorn hope that has not long to live," 
quickly retorts our adversary. 

He continues, contemptuously, — 

" America is too raw." 

"America is young. She's a child compared 
with your old nations, but a promising, glorious 
child. Her faults are only the faults of youth," 
we respond with some difficulty as to our pronouns 
and adjectives. 

" She 's a very bad child. She needs a whip- 
ping," chuckles our saucy neighbor. 

America's banner trails in the dust, and Helve- 
tia triumphs over all foes. In silence and chagrin 
America's feeble champion retires to the window, 
watches the birds picking up bread-crumbs on the 
balcony, and meditates a grand revenge when her 
German vocabulary shall be equal to her zeal. 
Helvetia's son being, in this instance, a very clever, 



HEIDELBERG IN WINTER. 21 

merry boy, soon laughingly sues for reconciliation, 
on the ground that, "after all, sister republics 
must not quarrel," and the two, in noble alliance, 
advance with renewed vigor, and speedily sweep 
from the face of the earth all tyrannous monarch- 
ical governments. 

Is it not, by the way, thoroughly German, that 
down in its last corner the Heidelberg daily paper 
prints each day, " Remember the poor little birds " 1 
And indeed they are remembered well ; and there 
are few casements here that do not open every 
morning, that the birdies' bread may be thrown 
upon the snow. 

And is there nothing else here in winter beside 
the innocent pastimes mentioned 1 There are won- 
derful views to be gained by those who have the 
courage to climb the winding silvery paths that 
lead up the Gaisberg and Heiligenberg. And then 
there is — majesty comes last ! — the castle. 

Ah ! here lies the magic of the place. This is 
why people love Heidelberg. It is because that 
wonderful old ruin is everywhere present, whatever 
one does, wherever one goes, binding one's heart 
to itself. You cannot forget that it stands there 
on the hill, sad and stately and superb. Lower 
your curtains, turn your back to the window, read 
the last novel if you will, still you will see it. I 
defy you to lose your consciousness of it. It will 
always haunt you, until it draws you out of the 
house — out into the air — through the rambling- 
streets — up the hill past the queer little houses 
— to the spot where it stands, and then it will not 
let you go. It holds you there in a strange en- 
chantment. You wander through chapel and 



22 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

banquet-hall, through prison-vault and pages' 
chamber, from terrace to tower, where you go as 
near the edge as you dare, — nearer than you dare, 
in fact, — and look down upon the trees growing in 
the moat. Because you never, in all your life, 
saw anything like a " ruin," and because there is 
but one Heidelberg Castle in the world, you take 
delight in simply wandering up and down long 
dark stairways, with no definite end in view. You 
may be hungry and cold, but you never know it. 
You are unconscious of time, and after hours of 
dream-life you only turn from gazing when some- 
body forcibly drags you away because the man is 
about to close the gates. 

I cannot discourse with ease upon quadrangles 
and facades. I am doubtful about finials, and 
my ideas are in confusion as to which buttresses 
fly and which hang ; but it is a blessed fact that 
one need not be very learned to care for lovely 
things, and while I live I shall never forget how 
the castle looked the first time I approached it. 

Some people say it is loveliest seen at sunset 
from the " Philosopher's Walk," on Heiligenberg 
across the Neckar, and some say it is like fairy-land 
when it is illuminated (which happens once or 
twice in a summer, — the last time, before the stu- 
dents go away in August, and leave the old town 
in peace and quiet), and when one softly glides in 
a little boat from far up the Neckar, down, dow T n, 
in the moonlight, until suddenly the castle, blaz- 
ing with lights, is before you. 

But though I should see it a thousand times 
with summer bloom around, with the charm of 
fair skies and sunshine, soft green hills and flow 7 - 



HEIDELBERG IN WINTER. 23 

ing water, or in the moonlight, with happy voices 
everywhere, and strains of music sounding sweet 
and clear in the evening air, I can never be sorry 
that, first of all, it rose in its beauty, before my 
eyes, out of a sea of new-fallen snow. 

0, the silence and the whiteness of that day ! 

We entered the grounds and passed through 
broad walks, among shadowy trees whose every twig 
was snow-covered, and by the snow-crowned Prin- 
cess Elizabeth Arch. On we went in silence, — 
only once did any sound break the stillness, when 
a little laughing child, in a sleigh drawn by a large 
black dog, aided by a good-natured half-breath- 
less servant, dashed by and disappeared among the 
trees. Soon we stood on the terrace overlooking 
the city and the Neckar. 

On one side was the castle, the dark mass stand- 
ing out boldly against the whiteness, — on the 
other, far below, the city, its steep, high roofs 
snow-white, its three church-spires rising towards 
cold, gray skies ; beyond, the frozen Neckar, then 
Heiligenberg, its white vineyards contrasting with 
the dusky fir-forests, and, far away as one could 
see, the great plain of the Rhine, with the line of 
the Haardt Mountains barely perceptible in the 
distance and the dim light. All was so white and 
still ! Only the brave ivy, glossy and green and 
fresh on the old walls and amid this frozen nature, 
spoke of life and hope. All else told of sadness, 
and of peace it may be, but of the peace that fol- 
lows renunciation. 

But to stand on the height — to look so far — 
to be in that white, holy stillness ! It was won- 
derful. It was too beautiful for words. 



A FLYING SHEET FROM PARIS. 




The Parisians " that the soldier- 
carries a bouquet on his musket, and it 
is said that Paris, though starving, must 
have flowers 1 These sweet spring days, 
when vast crowds of people are wandering about 
amusing themselves, and children are making daisy 
chains in the parks, and men pass along the streets 
with great branches of lilac blossoms or masses 
of rosebuds, which are sold at every corner, and 
skies are blue, and the lovely sunshine everywhere 
is falling upon happy-looking faces, you feel like 
blessing not only the spring-time, but beautiful 
Paris and the temperament of the French. "St. 
Denis caught a sunbeam flying, and he tied it with 
a bright knot of ribbons, and he flashed it on the 
earth as the people of France ; only, alas, he made 
two mistakes, — he gave it no ballast, and he dyed 
the ribbons blood-red." You think of the want of 
ballast and the blood-red tinge w r hen you look at 
the ruined Tuileries, and see every now and then 
other traces of the Commune. In our dining- 
room is a great mirror with a hole in its centre 
and long seams running to its corners. Madame 



A FLYING SHEET FROM PARIS. 25 

keeps it as a memento of those terrible times, and 
of her anxiety and terror when balls were coming- 
in her doors and windows, and she would not on 
any account have it removed. But, after all, it is 
the flying sunbeams of the present that most im- 
press you. They are more vivid, being actually 
before your eyes, than scenes of riot and madness, 
which you can only imagine. The life about you 
is altogether so fascinating, so cheering. You 
catch the spirit that seems to animate the people. 
Where all is so sunny and gay why should you 
grieve 1 ? Have you little troubles 1 Leave them 
behind and go out into the sweet sunshine, and 
they will grow so insignificant you will be ashamed 
to remember how you were brooding over them; 
and then, if they are really great, they will pass ; 
everything passes. Only take to-day to your heart 
the loveliness that is waiting for you, for indeed 
there is something in it that makes you not only 
happy for the time, but brave and hopeful for the 
future. All of which is the little sermon that 
Paris preaches to us all day long. Perhaps we 
did n't come to Paris for sermons especially, but 
after all it is often the unexpected ones that are 
the best. 

How shall I tell what we have seen and heard 
here? One day we visited the Pantheon, and, 
having seen what there was to see below, we went 
up to the dome, which affords a magnificent view 
of all Paris and the surrounding country. A party 
of school-girls ascended the long, narrow, winding 
flights at the same time, and they were entirely 
absorbed in counting the stairs. The one in 



2(3 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

advance clearly proclaimed the number ; the others 
verified her account. The interest was intense. 
Occasionally we would come to a platform where 
at first it would seem that there was nothing more 
to conquer. Breathless, panting, flushed, the 
young girls would look searchingly around, then, 
with a shriek of delight, would plunge into a dark 
corner and open a door, from which another crazy- 
looking stairway led up to other heights. Their 
chaperon, who looked as if she might be the prin- 
cipal of a school, gave up in despair before we 
were half-way up, and, seating herself to await 
their return, cast amused, kindly glances after the 
retreating forms of the undaunted girls. I take 
pleasure in stating the important and interesting 
fact that the number of steps from the ground to 
the " Lanterne " above the dome of the Pantheon 
is five hundred and twenty, and you can't possibly 
go higher unless you should choose to ascend a 
rope which is used when on grand occasions they 
illuminate the dome and burn a brilliant light on 
the very tiptop. So said a little abbe who looked 
like a mere boy, and who courteously told us 
many interesting things as we stood there, a 
group of strangers scanning one another with mild 
curiosity, — two well-bred Belgian boys with tho 
abbe, some ultra-fashionable dames, a party of 
Englishmen of course, and ourselves. The school- 
girls fortunately went down without seeing the 
rope. Had they observed it, and known that it 
was possible by any means whatever to go higher 
than they had gone, they would have been miser- 
able, unless indeed their aspiring spirit had led 
them in some wav to ascend it. 



A FLYING SHEET FROM PARIS. 27 

With the paintings and sculpture at the Louvre 
and the Luxembourg we have spent several happy 
days, only wishing the days might be months. 
Don't expect me to tell you what delighted us 
most, or how great pictures seemed which we had 
before seen only in engravings or photographs. 
They burst gloriously all at once upon our igno- 
rant eyes, and we wanted to sit days and days be- 
fore one picture that held us entranced, and yet 
our time was so limited we had to pass on and on 
regretfully. Of course some one was there to 
whisper in our ears, "0, this is nothing! You 
must go to Italy." Certainly we must go to Italy, 
but the thought of the beauty awaiting there 
could not detract from that which was around us. 
Before some of the paintings we felt like standing 
afar off and worshipping. There were Madonnas 
with insipid faces which we did not appreciate. 
There were other pictures which we coldly ad- 
mired ; they were wonderful, but we did not want 
to own them, — did not love them. Among those 
which we longed to seize and carry away is the 
" Cupid and Psyche " of Gerard, in which Psyche 
receiving the first kiss of love is an exquisitely 
innocent, fair-haired little maiden, not so very un- 
like the friend to whom we would like to send it. 

There are always curious people in the galleries. 
Sit down and rest a minute and something funny 
is sure to happen. 

" See this chaw-ming thing of Murillo, says a 
florid youth of nineteen or twenty, with very tight 
gloves, an elaborate necktie, and, alas! an un- 
questionably American air, as he marshals a timid- 



28 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

looking group, — his mother and sisters, perhaps. 
"Quite well done, now, isn't it?" And on he 
went. If he knew a Perugino from a Vandyck his 
countenance did him great injustice. Then an- 
other party comes along, — conscientious, ponder- 
ous, English, — and halts with precision. One of 
them reads, in a loud voice, from a book — " Titian 
■ — Portrait — 462 " — and they stare blankly at 
the picture before them, which happens to be not 
a Titian at all, but a " Meadow Scene, with Cows," 
by Cuyp, or a great battle-piece of Salvator Rosa. 
When they discover their mistake and recover 
from their astonishment, they pass on in search 
of the missing Titian. We smiled at this, but, as 
the pictures are not hung according to the order 
given in catalogues, we knew very well that it 
was our good fortune, and not our merit or our 
wisdom, that kept us from similar mistakes. "What 
might we not have done had we not been so beau- 
tifully guarded against all blundering by our escort, 
a French gentleman of rare culture, — both an 
amateur painter and sculptor, — and an intimate 
friend of some of the most distinguished French 
artists ! With him for a companion we felt supe- 
rior to all catalogues and treatises upon art. We 
have had Ihe pleasure, too, of visiting his private 
museum and studio, where are strange relics col- 
lected in a life of unusual travel and adventure. 
He is a retired colonel of the French army, and 
when in service has lived in Egypt, Turkey, Persia, 
Greece, and now his little room, which we climbed 
six flights of stairs to reach, is crowded with me- 
mentos of his wanderings. I despair of conveying 



A FLYING SHEET FROM PARIS. 29 

any idea of what he has hung upon his walls. It 
would almost be easier to tell what he has not. 
Persian pictures, stone emblems, fans, rosaries, 
swords, mosaics, pistols, queer chains and pipes, as 
well as some very valuable paintings, — a Vandyck, 
an Andrea del Sarto, a number of the modern 
French school, presented to him by the artists. 
Was it not a privilege to have such a guide when 
we visited the Paris lions] He took us to the 
Musee de Cluny, among other exceedingly interest- 
ing places, where we saw hosts of antiquities, — 
beautifully carved mantels, magnificent fireplaces, 
" big enough to roast a whole ox " (and they really 
use them, winters, too — the noble great logs were 
all ready to be lighted), rare old windows of stained 
glass, rich robes of high church dignitaries, por- 
celain, jewelled crowns of Gothic kings, old lace 
and tapestries, and carved wood that it did one's 
heart good to see. Girls with tied-back dresses, and 
hats fairly crushed by the weight of the masses of 
flowers with which French milliners persist in load- 
ing us this spring, did look so painfully modern in 
those mediaeval rooms ! We began to feel as if we 
were walking about in one of the Waverley novels, 
and fully expected to meet Ivanhoe clad in com- 
plete armor on the stone staircase that leads down 
from the chapel. 

There were many things over which we found it 
impossible to be enthusiastic, — the jawbone of 
Moliere, for example, in a glass case. It probably 
looks like less distinguished jawbones, but if his 
whole skeleton had been there I fear we should 
have been no more impressed. Chessmen of rock 



30 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

crystal and gold we coveted, and we liked the room 
in which are the great, ponderous, gilded state 
coaches of some century long ago, with their whips, 
harnesses, and comical postilion boots. There is 
a little sleigh or sledge there, said to have been 
Marie Antoinette's, — a small gold dragon, whose 
wing flies open to admit the one person whom the 
tiny equipage can seat. It looked as if it must 
have been pushed by some one behind. Fancy a 
gold dragon with fiery-red eyes and a wide-open 
red mouth coming towards you over the snow ! 

This whole building is full of interest from its 
age and historical associations. It was built in 
the fifteenth century, has been in the hands of 
comedians, of a sisterhood ; Marat held his hor- 
rible meetings here ; Mary of England lived here 
after the death of her husband, Louis XII., and 
you can still see the chamber of the " White 
Queen," with its ivory cabinets, vases, and queer 
old musical instruments. Visitors are requested 
not to touch anything, but we could n't resist 
the temptation of striking just one chord on a 
spinet. Such a cracked voice the poor thing had ! 
It sounded so dead and ghostlike and dreary, we 
hurried away as fast as we could. Don't be 
alarmed, and think 1 am going to write up all the 
history of the place. I have n't the least idea of 
doing such a thing ; only this I can tell you, — the 
Hotel de Cluny affords an excellent opportunity to 
test your knowledge of history ; and if you ever 
stand where we did, and send your thoughts wan- 
dering among past ages, may your dates be more 
satisfactory than were ours ! 



A FLYING SHEET FROM PARIS. 3^ 

The ruins of an old Roman palace, of which 
only a portion of the baths remain, adjoin the 
museum. There is a great room, sixty feet long, 
all of stone, and very high, which was used for 
the cold baths. The other baths are all gone, but 
if you imagine hot and warm and tepid ones as 
large as the cold, it certainly gives you a profound 
admiration for the magnitude of the ancient bath 
system. If Julian the Apostate, who built the 
palace, they say, could see us as we go peering 
curiously about, asking what this and that mean, 
and the names of stone things that were probably 
as common in his day as sewing-machines are now, 
would n't he laugh ] We looked over the shoulder 
of a painter who was making a delightful little 
picture of a part of the ruins, the stone pavement 
and staircase, then a beautiful arch through which 
we could look into the open air, and see the warm 
sunshine, the great lilac-bushes, and a tall old ivy- 
covered wall beyond. The contrast between the 
cold gray interior and the bright outer world was 
very effective. 

Strange old place where Ceesars have lived, and 
through which early kings of France and fierce 
Normans have swept, plundering and ruining, and 
where, to-day, by the fragments of the massive 
ivy-covered walls and under the trees in the pleas- 
ant park, happy little children play, and nurses 
chatter, and life is strong and fresh and warm, 
even while we are thinking of the dead past ! 



BADEN-BADEN. 




ADEN is a little paradise. It seems like 
a garden with the freshness of May on 
every flower and leaf. The long lines 
of chestnut-trees are rich with bright, 
pink blossoms, — solid pink, not pink-and-white like 
ours at home. You walk beneath them through 
shady avenues, where the young grass is like vel- 
vet, and every imaginable shade of refreshing 
green lies before your eyes. There is the tender 
May -leaf green of the shrubs, another of the soft 
lawns, that of the different trees, of the more dis- 
tant hill-slopes, and, beyond all, the deepest in- 
tensified green of the Black Forest rising nobly 
everywhere around. A hideous little bright-green 
cottage, prominent on one of the hills, irritates 
us considerably, not harmonizing with its deep 
background of pines, and we long at first to 
ruthlessly erase it from the picture ; but finally 
remembering the ugly little thing is actually 
somebody's home, our better nature triumphs, and 
we feel we can allow it to remain, and can only 
hope the dwellers within think it prettier than 
we do. 

There are already many visitors here, though it 



BADEN-BADEN. 33 

is as yet too early and cool for the great throng of 
strangers to be expected, and the vast numbers 
of people come no more who used to frequent the 
place before the gaming was abolished by the em- 
peror a few years ago, through Bismarck's especial 
exertions, it is said ; from which it is to be in- 
ferred that Baden's pure loveliness is less attract- 
ive to the world at large than the fascination of 
the gaming-tables. We hear everywhere around 
regrets for the lost charm, for the gayety, excite- 
ment, brilliancy ; and it is impossible to avoid 
wishing, not certainly that play were not abolished, 
but at least that we could have come when it was 
at its height to see for ourselves the strange phases 
of humanity that were here exhibited, and just how 
naughty it all was. Now the waiters shake their 
heads mournfully, as if a glory and a grace were 
departed, and say, " No, it is n't what it used to 
be, — nothing like it ! " and there seems to be a 
" banquet -hall -deserted " atmosphere pervading 
the rooms in the Conversation House. To be sure 
there is music there evenings, and a fashionable 
assembly walking about ; and there is music, too, 
in the kiosk, and a goodly number of gay people 
chatting, eating, and drinking at the little tables 
in the open air ; and people gather in the early 
mornings to drink the waters, as they always have 
done, but, after all, the tribute of a memory and 
a regret seems to be universally paid to the van- 
quished god of play, who is helping poor mortals 
cheat somewhere else. 

The Empress of Germany is here, and, after 
long-continued effort, we have seen her. How 



34 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

madly we have striven to accomplish this feat ; 
how we have questioned servants and shopkeepers ; 
how we have haunted the Lichtentlial Allee, 
that long, lovely, shady walk where her Majesty 
is said to promenade regularly every day ; how 
often we have had our garments, but not our 
ardor, dampened for her sake ; how she would 
never come ; and how finally, in desperation, we 
seated ourselves at a table under a tree near her 
hotel, devoured eagerly with our eyes all its win- 
dows, saw imperial dogs and imperial handmaidens 
in the garden, and couriers galloping away with 
despatches, saw the coachmen and footmen and 
retainers, but for a long time no empress, — all 
this shall never be revealed, because self-respect 
imposes strict silence in regard to such conduct. 

We must have looked somewhat like a picture 
in an old Harper's Magazine where, two hungry 
newsboys stand by the area railing as dinner is 
served, and when the different dishes are carried 
past the windows one regales himself with the sa- 
vory scents, while the other says something to this 
effect : " I don't mind the meats, but just tell me 
when the pudding comes and I '11 take a sniff." 

" Augusta, please, dear Augusta, come out ! " 
entreated we ; but she came not. When a carriage 
rolled round to the door, we were in ecstasies of 
expectation, convinced she was going out to drive, 
but instead came a gentleman, servants, and trav- 
elling-bags. 

" Why, it 's Weimar, — - our Weimar ! " said we 
with pride and ownership, because you see the 
Prince of Weimar lives in Stuttgart, and so do we. 



BADEN-BADEN. 35 

And as he drives off, out on the balcony among 
the plants comes her imperial Majesty and waves 
her handerchief to her brother in farewell. She 
wore a black dress, a white head-dress or break- 
fast-cap, looked like her photographs, and must 
once have been beautiful. She is an intensely 
proud woman, it is said, and a rigid upholder of 
etiquette, and tales are told of slight differences 
between her and the crown princess on this ac- 
count. 

Baden is one of the enticing places of the 
earth, — is so lovely that whenever, however, wher- 
ever you may look, you always spy some fresh 
beauty, and the Black Forest legends are hanging 
all about it, investing it with an endless charm. 
You can see in the frescoed panels on the front of 
the new Trinkhalle a picture illustrating some old 
story of a place near by, and then for your next 
day's amusement can go to the identical spot 
where the ghost or demon or goblin used to be. 

To Yburg, whose young knight met the beauti- 
ful, unearthly maiden by the old heathen temple 
in the full moonshine, as he was returning from the 
castle of his lady-love to his own, and who trans- 
ferred his affections — as adroitly as our young 
knights do the same thing nowadays — from her to 
the misty figure, and met the latter, night after 
night, was watched by his faithful servant, and was 
found dead on the ground one bright morning. 

Or to Lauf, where the ghost-wedding was, or 
almost was, but not quite, because the knight who 
was to be married to the very attractive ghost of a 
young woman grew so frightened when he saw all 



36 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

the glassy eyes of the ghostly witnesses staring at 
him that he could n't say yes when the sepulchral 
voice of the ghost of a bishop asked him if he 
would have this woman to his wedded wife ; and 
all the ghosts were deeply offended and made a 
great uproar, and the knight fell down as if dead, 
and he too was found lying on the ground in 
the morning; but him, I believe, they were able 
to revive. 

And you can go to the Convent of Liclitenthal, 
from which the nuns, upon the approach of the 
enemy, in 1689, fled in terror, leaving their keys 
in the keeping of the Virgin Mary, who came down 
from her picture and stood in the doorway, so that 
the French soldiers shrank back aghast, and all 
was left unharmed. 

We went there, and saw a number of Marj^s in 
blue and red gowns, but could not quite tell which 
was the one who came down from her frame to 
guard the convent. 

In the chapel eight or ten children mumbled 
their prayers in unison, while we stood far behind, 
examining the old stained-glass windows, with the 
peculiar blue tint in them that cannot now be re- 
produced, and the queer old stone knights in effigy: 
and I don't imagine the Lord heard the children 
any the less because they were very absurd, and 
bobbed about in every direction, and constantly 
turned one laughing face quickly round to look at 
us, then back again, then another and another, 
while all the time the praying went mechanically 
on. There was a little girl, nine years old per- 
haps, who came to meet us by the old well here, 



BADEN-BADEN. 37 

and stood smiling at us with great, brown, express- 
ive eyes. Her face was so brilliant and sweet we 
were charmed with her ; but when we spoke she 
upturned that rare little face of hers and answered 
not a word. I took" her hand in mine, but before 
she gave it she kissed it, and to each of the party, 
who afterwards took her hand, she gave the same 
graceful greeting. Not an airy kiss thrown at 
one, after the fashion of children in general, but a 
quiet little one deposited upon her hand before it 
was honored by the touch of the stranger. The 
pretty action, together with the exquisite face, 
calm and clear as a cherub, and ideally childlike, 
made a deep impression on us ; and in some way, 
what we afterwards learned — that she was com- 
pletely deaf and dumb — did not occur to us. We 
thought that she w r ould not speak, not that she 
could not. 

On a height overlooking the town stands a me- 
morial chapel, built in antique style, of alternate 
strata of red and white sandstone, by wmich a very 
lively effect is produced. It has a gilded dome 
and a portico supported by four Ionic pillars. In 
the interior are frescos of the twelve apostles ; 
and upon the high gold partition or screen, which 
separates the choir from the body of the chapel, 
are painted scenes from the New Testament. The 
floor is of marble in two colors. 

We visited it fortunately during service, and 
saw for the first time the Greek ritual. The sing- 
ing was fine, the boys' voices sweet and clear, but 
many of the forms unintelligible to a stranger. 
For instance, we could only imagine what was 



38 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

meant when one priest in scarlet and gold would 
go behind a golden door and lock it, and another 
one would stand before it intoning the strangest 
words in the strangest sing-song, until at last they 
would open the door and let him in. The service 
in the Greek churches is either in the Greek or old 
Sclavonic language. Here we inferred that we 
were listening to the old Sclavonic, as the chapel 
belongs to a Roumanian prince ; but only this can 
we say positively, — that two words {Alleluia and 
Amen) were absolutely all that we understood 

The robes were rich ; incense was burned ; there 
were a few worshippers, all standing, the Greek 
Church allowing no seats ; but in some places 
crutches are used to lean upon when the service 
is long, as on great festal days. There are no ser- 
mons except on special occasions, the ordinary rit- 
ual consisting of chants between the deacons and 
chorister boys, readings from certain portions of 
the Scripture, prayers, legends, the creed, etc. 
They all turn towards the east during prayer, and 
instrumental music is forbidden. 

In this little chapel the morning service which 
we witnessed was brief, and, of its kind, simple. 
We noticed particularly among the worshippers 
one old gentleman who seemed to be very devout. 
He crossed himself frequently, — by the way, not 
as Roman Catholics do, — and at certain times 
knelt, and even actually prostrated himself, upon 
the marble pavement. He was a fine old man, 
and looked like a Russian. He was earnest and 
attentive, but he made us all exceedingly ner- 
vous, for his boots were stiff and his limbs far 



BADEN-BADEN. 39 

from supple, and when he went down we feared he 
never would be able to come np again without as- 
sistance ; and we were incessantly and painfully on 
the alert, prepared to help him recover his equi- 
librium should he entirely lose it, which often 
seemed more than probable. This was a Rouma- 
nian prince, Stourdza, — who lives winters in Paris 
and summers in Baden, — and who erected the 
chapel in memory of his son, who died at seventeen 
in Paris from excessive study. A statue of the 
boy, bearing the name of the sculptor, Rinaldo 
Rinaldi, Roma, 1866, — life-size, on a high pedes- 
tal, — is on one side of the interior. He sits by a 
table covered with books, — Bossuet, Greek, and 
Latin, — while an angel standing beside him rests 
one hand on his shoulder, and with the other 
beckons him away from his work. His Virgil lies 
open to the lines, — 

" Si qua fata aspera rumpas 
Tu Marcellus eris." 

If the boy was in reality so beautiful as the mar- 
ble and as the portrait of him which hangs at the 
left of the entrance, he must have looked as lofty 
and tender and pure as an archangel. 

Opposite him are the statues of the father and 
mother, who are yet living, and between them a 
symbolical figure, — Faith, I presume. A curtain 
conceals this group, beneath which the parents will 
one day lie. 

Paintings of them also hang by the entrance, 
with a portrait of the boy and one of the sister, 
" Chere consolation de ses parents" as she is called. 
The faces are all fine, but that of the young stu- 



40 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

dent the noblest, and the statue of the lovely boy 
called away from his books seemed a happy way of 
telling his brief story. In the vaults below where 
he lies are always fresh flowers, and a light con- 
tinually burning. 

It is impossible to enumerate all the sights in 
and about Baden. If it is any satisfaction to you, 
you can look at the villas of the great as much 
as you please ; but to know that Queen Victoria 
lived here, and Clara Schumann there, and yonder 
is the Turgenieff Villa, with extensive grounds, 
does not seem productive of any especial enjoy- 
ment. It is much more exhilarating to leave the 
haunts of men and walk off briskly through the 
woods to some golden milestone of the past, — 
the old Jager Hans, for instance, whose windows 
look upon a wide, rich prospect, and where the 
holy Hubartus, the patron of the chase, is painted 
on the ceiling, with the stag bearing the crucifix 
upon his antlers ; and within whose octagonal walls 
there must have been much revelry by night in the 
good old times. 

To the old castle where the Markgrafen of Ho- 
henbaden — the border lords — used to live we 
went one day, and anything funnier than that 
particular combination of the romantic and ridic- 
ulous never was known. Riding "in the boyhood 
of the year" through lovely woods, by mosses 
mixed with violet, hearing the song of birds, 
breathing the purest, balmiest air, who could help 
wandering if Launcelot and Guinevere themselves 
found lovelier forest deeps; and who could help 
feeling very sentimental indeed, and quoting all 



BADEN-BADEN. 41 

available poetry, and imagining long trains of 
stately knights riding over the same path, and so 
on ad infinitum ! While indulging these romantic 
fancies we discovered that our donkey also was 
often lost in similar reveries, from which he was 
recalled by the donkey-boy, who by a sudden blow 
would cause him to madly plunge, then to stop 
short and exhibit all the peculiarly pleasing don- 
key tricks which we had read about, but never 
before experienced. And to ride a very small and 
wicked donkey and to read about it are two alto- 
gether different things, let me assure you. 

Three donkeys galloping like mad up a moun- 
tain, three persons bouncing, jolting, shrieking 
with laughter, a jolly boy running behind with a 
long stick, — such was the experience that effec- 
tually dispelled our fine fancies. 

The view at the castle is far extended and beau- 
tiful ; you see something of the Rhine in the dis- 
tance, the little Oosbach, and the peaceful valley 
between. Baden scenery, from whatever point you 
look at it, has the same friendly, serene aspect, — 
little villages dotted here and there on the soft 
hill-slopes, and in the background the bold, beau- 
tiful line of the pine-covered mountains. The 
castle must have been once a fine, grand place. 
Those clever old feudal fellows knew well where to 
build their nests, and like eagles chose bold, wild 
heights for their rocky eyries. " Heir liegen sie 
die stolzen Furstentrumer," quoted a German, 
wandering about the ruins. 

Up to the Yburg Castle we went also ; and the 
" up " should be italicized, for the mountain seemed 



42 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

as high and steep as the Hill of Science, and we 
felt that the summit of one was as unattainable 
as that of the other. But the woods were beauti- 
ful, and their whisperings and murmur ings and 
words were not in a strange language, for the tall 
dark pines sang the selfsame song that they sing- 
in the dear old New England woods, the wild- 
flowers and birds were a constant delight, the air 
fresh and cool, and at last we reached the top, and 
found another castle and another view. 

Here there was little castle and much view. 
Really a magnificent prospect, but so fierce and 
chilling a wind that we could with difficulty re- 
main long enough on the old turrets to fix the 
landscape in our memory, and we Avere glad to 
seek shelter in the little house, where a man and 
his wife live all the year round ; and frightfully 
cold and lonely must it be there in winter, when 
even in May our teeth were chattering gayly. 

The visitors' book there was rather amusing. 

One American girl writes, with her name and 
the date, — 

" No moon to-night, which is of course 
The driver's fault, not ours." 

" Mr. H. C."— Black, we will call him — " walked 
up from Baden the 10th of August, 1875"; and 
half the people who go to Yburg walk. As we 
had walked and never dreamed of being elated by 
our prowess, Mr. Black's manner of chronicling 
his feat seemed comical. 

You look down from the mountain into the 
Affenthaler Valley, where the w T ine of that name 
" grows." It is a good, light wine, and healthful, 



BADEN-BADEN. 43 

but a young person — we decided she must be a 
countrywoman, because she expresses her opinion 
so freely — writes in regard to it, — 

" Affenthaler. The drink sold under that honor- 
able name at this restaurant is the beastliest and 
most poisonous of drinks, not absolutely undrink- 
able or immediately destructive of life. Traveller, 
take care. Avoid the abominable stuff. Beware ! " 

Immediately following, in German, with the 
gentleman's name and address, is, — 

" I have drunk of the Affenthaler which this 
unknown English person condemns, and pronounce 
it a good and excellent wine." 

That Yburg by moonlight might be conducive 
to softness can easily be imagined. Here is a 
sweet couplet : — 

" Let our eyes meet, and yon will see 
That I love you and you love me." 

But best of all in its simplicity and strength 
was "Agnes Mary Taylor, widow," written clearly 
in ink, and some wag had underscored in pencil 
the last expressive word. 

Does the lady go over the hill and dale signing 
her name always in this way? On the Yburg 
mountain-top it had the effect of a great and 
memorable saying, like "Veni, vidi, vici,"or "Apres 
nous le deluge." Agnes Mary Taylor, widow. 
Could anything be more terse, more deliciously 
suggestive % 



RAMBLES ABOUT STUTTGART. 




HIS letter is going to be about nothing in 
particular. I make this statement with 
an amiable desire to please, for so much 
advice in regard to subjects comes to me, 
and so many subjects previously chosen have failed 
to produce, among intimate friends, the pleasur- 
able emotions which I had ingenuously designed, 
there remains to me now merely the modest hope 
that a rambling letter about things in general may 
be read with patience by at least one charitable 
soul. Bless our intimate friends ! What would 
we do without them 1 But are n't they perplexing 
creatures, take them all in all ! " Don't write 
any more about peasant-girls and common things," 
says one. " Tell us about the grand people, — how 
they look, what they wear, and more about the 
king." Anxious to comply with the request, I try 
to recollect how the Countess von Poppendoppen- 
heimers spring suit was made in order to send 
home a fine Jenkinsy letter about it, when another 
friend writes, " The simplest things are always 
best, — the flower-girl at the corner, the ways of 
the peasants, ordinary, every-day matters." Have 
patience, friends. You shall both be heard. The 



RAMBLES ABOUT STUTTGART. 45 

Countess von Poppendoppenheimer's gown has 
meagre, uncomfortable sleeves, is boned down and 
tied back like yours and mine, after this present 
wretched fashion which some deluded writer says 
" recalls the grace and easy symmetry of ancient 
Greece"; but if he should try to climb a mountain 
in the overskirt of the period he would express 
himself differently. 

As to the king, one sees him every day in the 
streets, where he courteously responds to the 
greetings of the people. He must be weary 
enough of incessantly taking off his hat. The 
younger brother of Queen Olga and of the Em- 
peror of Russia, the Grand Duke Michael, came 
here the other day. Seeing a long line of empty 
carriages and the royal coachmen in the scarlet 
and gold liveries that betoken a particular occa- 
sion, — blue being the every-day color, ■ — we fol- 
lowed the illustrious vehicles, curious to know 
what was going to happen, and saw a gentlemanly- 
looking blond man, in a travelling suit, welcomed 
at the station by different members of the court ; 
while all those pleasing objects, the scarlet and 
gold men, took off their hats. For the sake of the 
friend who delights in glimpses of "high life," I 
regret that I have not the honor to know what 
was said on this occasion, our party having been 
at a little distance, and behind a rope with the rest 
of the masses. 

But really the common people are better stud- 
ies. You can stop peasants in the street and ask 
them questions, and you can't kings, you know. 
Peasants just now can be seen to great ad van- 



4G ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

tage at the spring fair, which with its numberless 
booths and tables extends through several squares, 
and to a stranger is an interesting and curious 
sight. This portion of the city, where the market- 
place, the Schiller Platz, and the Stiftskirche are, 
has an old, quaint effect, the Stiftskirche and the 
old palace being among the few important build- 
ings older than the present century, while the 
rest of Stuttgart is fresh and modern. From the 
high tower of this old church one has the best pos- 
sible view of Stuttgart, and can see how snugly 
the city lies in a sort of amphitheatre, while the 
picturesque hills covered with woods and vineyards 
surround it on every side. One sees the avenues 
of chestnut-trees, the Konigsbau, a fine, striking 
building with an Ionic colonnade, the old palace 
and the new one, and the Anlagen stretching away 
green and lovely towards Cannstadt. On this 
tower a choral is played with wind instruments at 
morn and sunset, and sometimes a pious old man 
passing stops to listen and takes off" his hat as he 
waits. 

In the little octagonal house up there lives a 
prosperous family, a man, his wife, and ten children. 
The woman, a fresh, buxom, brown-eyed goodwifc, 
told us she descended to the lower world hardly 
once in three or four weeks, but the children did 'nt 
mind the distance at all, and often ran up and 
down twelve or fifteen times a day. How terrific 
must be the shoe-bill of this family ! Ten pairs 
of feet continuously running up and down nearly 
two hundred and sixty stone steps ! She was kind 
enough to show us all her penaies, — even her 



RAMBLES ABOUT STUTTGART. A*J 

husband asleep, — and everything was homelike 
and cheery up there, boxes of green things grow- 
ing in the sunshine, clothes hanging out to dry, 
canary-birds singing. 

There is a small silver bell — perhaps a foot and 
a half in diameter at the mouth — at one side 
of the tower, and it is rung every night at nine 
o'clock and twelve, and has been since 1348. It 
has a history so long and so full of mediaeval hor- 
rors, like many other old stories in which Wiirtem- 
berg is rich, that it would be hardly fitting to 
relate it in toto, but the main incidents are inter- 
esting and can be briefly given. 

On the Bopsa Hill where now we walk in the 
lovely woods, and from which the Bopsa Spring 
flows, bringing Stuttgart its most drinkable water, 
stood, once upon a time, — in the fourteenth cen- 
tury, to be exact, — a certain Schloss Weissenburg, 
about which many strange things are told. The 
Weissenburgs conducted themselves at times in 
a manner which would appear somewhat erratic to 
our modern ideas. 

At the baptism of an infant daughter, Papa von 
Weissenburg was killed by the falling of some 
huge stag-antlers upon his head. We are glad to 
read about the baptism, for later there does n't 
seem to have been a strong religious element in 
the family. Shortly afterwards Rudolph, the 
eldest son, was stabbed by a friend through jeal- 
ousy because young Von Weissenburg had won 
the affections of the fair dame of whom both 
youths were enamored. Then followed strife be- 
tween the surviving brother and the monks of 



48 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

St. Leonhard, who would not allow the murdered 
man to be buried in holy ground, the poor boy 
having had no time to gasp out his confession and 
partake of the sacrament, and they even refused 
to bury him at all. Hans von Weissenburg swore 
terrible oaths by his doublet and his beard, and 
cursed the monks till the air was blue, and came 
with his friends and followers and buried his 
brother twelve feet deep directly in front of St. 
Leonhard's Chapel (there is a St. Leonhard's 
Church here now on the site of the old chapel), 
and forbade the monks to move or insult the 
body. Later, when they wished to use the land 
for a churchyard, they were in a great dilemma. 
Rudolph's bones they dared not move and would 
not bless; at last, what did they do but consecrate 
the earth only five feet deep, so the blessing would 
not reach Rudolph, who lay seven feet deeper still, 
— and they also insulted the grave by building 
over it. Hans, on this account, slew a monk, and 
was in turn killed because he had murdered a holy 
man, and that was the end of him. 

There remained in the castle on the hill Mamma 
von Weissenburg, or rather Von Somebodyelse, 
now, for she had wept her woman's tears and mar- 
ried again. When the infant daughter, Ulrike 
Margarethe, whose baptism has been mentioned, 
had grown to be a beautiful young woman, the 
mother suddenly disappeared and never was seen 
again. The daughter publicly mourned, ordered 
a beacon-light to be kept continually burning at 
the castle, gathered together all her silver chains 
and ornaments, and had them melted into a bell, 



RAMBLES ABOUT STUTTGART. 49 

which was hung on the castle tower, and which she 
herself always rang at nine in the evening and at 
midnight, for the sorrowing Ulrike said her beloved 
mother might be wandering in the dense woods, 
and hearing the bell might be guided by it to her 
home. 

Ulrike was a pious person. She said her prayers 
regularly, went about doing good among poor sick 
people, never failed to ring the bell twice every 
night, and was always mourning for her mother. 
When at last she died, she gave orders that the 
bell should always be rung, as in her lifetime, 
from the castle ; and in case the latter should be 
disturbed, or unsafe, the bell was to be transferred 
to the highest tower in Stuttgart. So Ulrike the 
Good bequeathed large sums of silver to pay for the 
fulfilment of her wishes, and died. Accordingly 
the little bell was brought, in time of public dis- 
turbance, to the small tower on the Stiftskirche 
in 1377, the higher one not then existing, and in 
1531 was moved to its present position. 

The next important item in the bell-story is 
that in 1598 the Princess Sybilla, daughter of 
Duke Friedrich I. of Suabia, was lost in the 
woods, and, hearing the bell ring at nine, followed 
the sound to the Stiftskirche, and in her gratitude 
she also endowed the bell largely, declaring it 
must ring at the appointed hours through all 
coming time. 

So the little bell pealed out for many years, — 
just as it does this day, — until one night, two 
days after Easter, 1707, and three centuries and 
a half after the death of the exemplary Ulrike, it 



50 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

happened, in the course of human events, that the 
man whose office it was to ring the midnight bell 
was sleepy and five minutes late. Suddenly a wo- 
man's figure draped in black, with jet-black hair 
and face as white as paper, appeared before him, 
and asked him why he did not do his duty. He 
rang his bell, then conversed with the ghost, who 
was Ulrike von Weissenburg, and obtained from 
her valuable information. She must ever watch 
the bell, she said, and see that it was rung at the 
exact hours ; and she it was who carried the light 
that confused travellers and led them to destruc- 
tion near the ruins of Weissenburg Castle ; and 
she was altogether a most unpleasant ghost, who 
could never rest while one stone of the castle re- 
mained upon another. 

This was her condemnation for her evil deeds. 
She had murdered her mother, for certain ugly 
reasons which in the old chronicle are explicitly set 
forth, and she had stabbed her two young sons of 
whose existence the world had never known ; and 
her career was altogether as wicked as wicked could 
be ; but this Ulrike, like many another clever sin- 
ner, never lost her saintly aspect before the world. 

They granted her rest at last by pulling down 
the remaining stones of the castle, and giving 
them to the wine-growers near by for foundations 
for the vineyards ; so now no ghost appears to 
rebuke the bellringer when too much beer pro- 
longs his sleep. Bones were found beneath the 
castle where Ulrike said she had hidden the bodies 
of her mother and children, thus clearly prov- 
ing, of course, the truth of the tale. It is the 



RAMBLES ABOUT STUTTGART. §\ 

most natural thing in the world to believe in 
ghosts when you read old Suabian stories. The 
Von Weissenburgs seem to have been, for the age 
in which they lived, a very quiet, orderly, high- 
toned family. 

Now how do I know but that somebody will at 
once write, "I don't like stories about silver bells," 
which will be very mortifying indeed, as it is evi- 
dent I consider this a good story, or I should not 
take the trouble to relate it. 

0, come over, friends, and write the letters your- 
selves, and then you will see how it is ! Worst of 
all is it when we write of what strikes us as comic 
precisely as we mention a comic thing at home, 
or of mighty potentates, giving information ob- 
tained exclusively from German friends, and other 
German friends are then displeased. But is it 
worth while to resent the utterance of opinions 
that do not claim to be the infallible truth of ages, 
but only the hasty record of fleeting impressions 1 
Peace, good people ; let us have no savage criti- 
cism or shedding of blood, though we do chatter 
lightly of majestate, saying merely what his sub- 
jects have told us. 

We are all apt to be too sensitive about our own 
lands and their customs. Yet have we not learned 
to smile quietly when we are told that American 
gentlemen sit in drawing-rooms, in the presence of 
ladies, with their feet on the mantels ; that Ameri- 
can wives have their husbands "under the pantoffeV 
(would that more of them had) ; that America has 
no schools, no colleges, no manners ; that Amer- 
ican girls are, in general, examples of total de- 



52 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

pravity ; that pickpockets and murderers go unmo- 
lested about our streets, seeking whom they may 
devour; that we have no law, no order, no moral- 
ity, no art, no poetry, no past, no anything desir- 
able % What can one do but smile 1 Smile, then, 
in turn, you loyal ones, when I have the bad taste 
to call ugly what you are willing to swear is 
beautiful as a dream. Thoughts are free, and so 
are pens ; and both must run on as they will. 

Let me, therefore, hurt no one's feelings if I say 
that Stuttgart in winter, with little sunshine, a 
dreary climate, and a peculiar, disagreeable, deep 
mud in the streets, does not at first impress a 
stranger as an especially attractive place. But 
now, with its long lines of noble chestnut-trees in 
full blossom ; with the pretty Schloss Platz and 
the Anlagen, where fountains are playiug and great 
blue masses of forget-me-nots and purple pansies 
and many choice flowers delight your eyes ; with 
the shady walks in the park, where you meet 
a dreamer with his book, or a group of young- 
men on horseback, or pretty children by the lake 
feeding the swans and ducks ; with the lovely air 
of spring, full of music, full of fragrance ; and, 
best of all, with the beauty of the surrounding 
country, — he would indeed be critical who would 
not find in Stuttgart a fascinating spot. 

There is music everywhere, there- are flowers 
everywhere. Your landlady hangs a wreath of 
laurel and ivy upon your door to welcome you 
home from a little journey, and brings you back, 
when she goes to market, great bunches of sweet- 
ness, — rosebuds and lilies of the valley. You 
climb the hills and come home laden with forget- 



RAMBLES ABOUT STUTTGART. 53 

me-nots, — big beauties, such as we never see at 
home, — violets, and anemones. It has been a 
cold spring here until now, but the flowers have 
been brave enough to appear as usual, and, wan- 
dering about among the distracting things with 
hands and baskets as full as they will hold, a pic- 
ture of days long ago darts suddenly before me, — 
two school-girls, their Virgils under their arms, 
rubber boots on their feet, stumbling through 
bleak, wet Maine pasture-lands, bearing spring in 
their hearts, but searching for it in vain in the 
outer world around them. The other girl will 
rejoice to know that here I have found spring in 
its true presence. 

And then there is May wine ! Do you know 
what it is, and how to make it % You must walk 
several miles by a winding path along the bank 
of the Neckar. You must see the crucifixes by 
the wayside, and the three great blocks of stone, 
— two upright and one placed across them, — ■ 
making a kind of high table, for the convenience 
of the peasant-women, who can stand here, remove 
from their heads their heavy baskets, rest, and re- 
place them without assistance. You must peep 
into the tiniest of chapels, resplendent with ban- 
ners of red and gold and a profusion of fresh 
flowers, all ready for the morning, which will be a 
high feast-day. You must pass through a village 
where women and children are grouped round the 
largest, oldest well you ever saw, with a great 
crossbeam and an immense bucket swinging high 
in the air. And at last you must sit in a garden 
on a height overlooking the Neckar. There must 
be a charming village opposite, with an old, old 



54 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

church, and pretty trees about you partly conceal- 
ing the ruins of some old knight's abode. Don't 
you like ruins] But just enough modestly in the 
background are n't so very bad. You hear the 
sound of a mill behind you, and the falling of 
water, and, in the branches above your head, the 
joyful song of a Schwarz Kopf. And then some- 
body pours a flask of white wine into a great bowl, 
to which he adds bunches of Waldmeister, — a fra- 
grant wildwood flower, — and drowns the flowers 
in the wine until all their sweetness and strength 
are absorbed by it, and afterwards adds sugar and 
soda-water and quartered oranges, — and the de- 
coction is ladled out and offered to the friends 
assembled, while there is a golden sunset behind 
the hills across the Neckar. And you walk back 
in the twilight through the village that is so 
small and sleepy it is preparing already to put 
itself to bed. And the peasants you meet say, 
" Griiss Gott ! " " Griiss Gott ! " say you, which 
is n't in the least to be translated literally, and 
only means " Good day," though the pretty, old- 
fashioned greeting always seems like a benedic- 
tion. You hear the vesper-bells and the organ- 
tones pealing out from the chapel ; you see some 
real gypsies with tawny babies over their shoul- 
ders (poor things! they will steal so that they are 
allowed to remain in a village but one day at a 
time, and then must move on). You feel very 
bookish, everything is so new, so old, so charming, 
— and that is "Mai Wein." 

How it would taste at dinner with roast-beef 
and other prosaic surroundings, — how it actually 
did taste, 1 have n't the faintest idea. 






THE SOLITUDE. 




HAT the Germans call an Ausjlug, or ex- 
cursion, deserves to be translated liter- 
ally, for it is often a veritable flight out 
of the region of work and care into a 
tranquil, restful atmosphere. The ease with which 
middle-aged, heavy-looking men here put on their 
wings, so to speak, and soar away from toil and traf- 
fic, at the close of a long, hard day, is always marvel- 
lous, however often we observe it. It seems a 
natural and an inevitable thing for them to start 
off with a chosen few, wander through lovely 
woods, climb a pretty hill, watch the changing 
lights at sunset over a broad valley, then return 
home, talking of poets and painters, of life prob- 
lems, of whatever lies nearest the heart. Their 
ledgers and stupid accounts and schemes and the 
state of the markets do not fetter them as they 
do our business men. Such enjoyment is so sim- 
ple, childlike, and rational, that the old question 
how men accustomed to wear the harness of com- 
mercial life will ever learn to bear the bliss of 
heaven, in its conventional acceptation, seems half 
solved. The Germans, at least, would be blessed 
in any heaven where fair skies and hills and forests 



5Q ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

and streams would lie before their gaze. However 
inadequate their other qualifications for Elysium 
may be, they excel us by far in this respect. Even 
the coarser, lower men w 7 ho gather in gardens to 
drink unlimited beer are yet not quite unmindful 
of the beauty of the trees whose young foliage 
shades them, and look out, oftener than we would 
be apt to give them credit for, upon the vine-clad 
hills beyond the city. A friend, a prominent 
banker, who is almost invariably in his garden or 
some other restful spot in the free air at evening, 
now goes out to Cannstadt, two miles from here, 
mornings at seven, because " one must be out as 
much as possible in this exquisite weather." If 
bankers and lawyers and our busiest of business 
men at home w T ould only begin and end days after 
this fashion, their hearts and heads would be fresh 
and strong far longer for it, that is, if they could 
find rest and enjoyment so, and that is the ques- 
tion, — could they 1 And why is it, if they can- 
not 1 ? I leave the answer to wiser heads, who will 
probably reply as usual, that our whole mode of 
life is different, which is quite true ; but why need 
it be, in this respect, so very different ] Here is a 
valuable hint to some enormously wealthy person, 
childless and without relatives, of course, and about 
to make his will, w T ho at this moment is consider- 
ing the comparative merits of different benevolent 
schemes, and is wavering between endowing a col- 
lege and founding a hospital. Do neither, dear 
sir. Take my advice, because I 'ni far away, and 
don't know you, and am perfectly disinterested, 
and, moreover, the advice is sound and good : 



THE SOLITUDE. 57 

Make gardens and parks everywhere, in as many 
towns as possible. Not great, stately parks that 
will directly be fashionable, but little parks that 
will be loved ; and winding ways must lead to 
them through woodlands, and seats and tables 
must be placed in alluring spots, and all the paths 
must be so seductive they will win the most in- 
flexible, absorbed, care-worn man of business to 
tread them. Do this, have your will printed in 
every newspaper in the land, and many will rise 
up and call you blessed. And if you are not 
so very rich, make just one small park, with 
pretty walks leading to it and out of it, and say 
publicly why you do it, — that people may have 
more open air and rest ; and if they only have 
these, Nature will do what remains to be done, and 
win their hearts and teach them to love her better 
than now. Of course it is a well-worn theme, but 
no one can live in this German land without long- 
ing to borrow some of its capacity for taking its 
ease and infuse it into the veins of nervous, hurry- 
ing, restless America. 

A pleasant Ausflug from Stuttgart is to the Soli- 
tude, a palace built more than a hundred years 
ago by Carl Eugen, a duke of Wiirtemberg, whose 
early life was more brilliant than exemplary. Many 
roads lead to it, if not all, as to Rome. In the 
fall we went through a little village, — throbbing 
with the excitement of the vintage-time, resplen- 
dent with yellow corn hanging from its small case- 
ments, — and by pretty wood-roads, where the 
golden-brown and russet leaves gleamed softly, and 
the hills in the distance looked hazy, and all was 



58 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

quietly lovely, though the golden glories and flam- 
ing scarlet of our woods were not there ; and where 
now softly budding trees, spring air and spring 
sounds, anemones and crocuses, and forget-me-nots 
and Maiglockchen, tempt one to long days of aim- 
less, happy wandering. On one road, the new one 
by a waterfall, is the Burgher Allee, where once 
the burghers came out to welcome a prince or a 
duke returning from a wedding or a war, and stood 
man by man where now a line of pines, planted or 
set out in remembrance, commemorates the event. 
If exception is taken to the uncertain style of this 
narration, may I add that positiveness is not desir- 
able in a story for the truth of which there are no 
vouchers ] The idea of a prince welcomed home 
from the wars is to me more impressive; but choice 
in such matters is quite free. 

You can go to the Solitude, if you please, 
through the Royal Game Park, a pretty, quiet spot, 
where a broad carriage-road winds along among 
noble oaks and beeches, and through the trees 
peep the great, soft eyes of animals who are 
neither tame nor wild, and who seem to know 
that they belong to royalty and may stare at 
passers-by with impunity. A superb stag stood 
near the drive, gave us a lordly glance, turned 
slowly, and walked with majestic composure away. 
We did not interest him, but it did not occur to 
him to hurry in the least on our account. We 
felt that we were inferior beings, and were morti- 
fied that we had no antlers, that we might hold 
up our heads before him. Two little lakes, the 
Barensee and PfafFensee, — the latter thick with 



THE SOLITUDE. 59 

great reeds and rushes, and haunted by a peculiar 
stillness, — invite you to lie on the soft turf, sea 
visions, and dream dreams. A small hunting- 
pavilion stands on terraces by the Barensee, with 
guardian bears in stone before it, and antlers 
and other trophies of the chase ornamenting it 
within and without. It was erected in 1782, at 
the time of a famous hunt in honor of the Grand 
Duke Paul of Russia, afterwards emperor, who 
married Sophie of Wiirtemberg, niece of Carl 
Eugen. From all hunting-districts of the land a 
noble army of stags was driven towards these 
woods, encircled night and day by peasants to pre- 
vent the animals from breaking through. The 
stags were driven up a steep ascent, then forced to 
plunge into the Barensee, where they could be shot 
with ease by the assembled hunters in the pavilion. 
Seeing the pretty creatures now fearlessly wan- 
dering in the sweet stillness of the park, and pic- 
turing in contrast that scene of destruction and 
butchery, it seems a pity that the grand gentlemen 
of old had to take their pleasure like brutes and 
pagans. 

The Solitude is not far from here. Built first 
for a hunting-lodge between 1763 and 1767, it was 
gradually improved, enlarged, and beautified, grew 
into a pleasure palace, had its time of brilliant 
life and of decay ; and now, renovated by the 
king's command, is a place where people go for 
the walk and the view, and where in summer a 
few visitors live quietly in pure air, and drink 
milk, it being a Cur-Anstalt. The adjacent build- 
ings were used as a hospital during the late war. 



60 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

The Solitude is not in itself an interesting struc- 
ture ; it is in rococo style, having a large oval hall 
with a high dome, adjoining pavilions, and it looks 
white and gold, and bare and cold, and disappoint- 
ing to most people. There is nothing especial to 
see, — a little fresco, a little old china, some im- 
mensely rich tapestry, white satin embroidered 
with gold, adorning one of those pompous, impossi- 
ble beds, in which it seems as if nobody could ever 
have slept. But there is enough to feel, as there 
must always be in places where the damp atmos- 
phere is laden with secrets a century old, and 
the walls whisper strange things. There are nar- 
row, triangular cabinets and boudoirs with nothing 
at all in them, which, however, make you feel that 
you will presently stumble upon something amaz- 
ing. All of Bluebeard's wives hanging in a row 
would hardly surprise one here. The place is full, 
in spite of its emptiness. It seems scarcely fitting 
that the many mirrors should reflect a little band 
of tourists in travelling suits and with umbrellas, 
instead of stately dames and cavaliers affecting 
French manners and French morals, and gleaming 
in satin and jewels beneath the glass chandeliers. 
There is a walk, always cool even in the hottest 
summer days, where in a double alley of superb 
pines the company used to seek shade and rest, 
and the fair ladies paced slowly up and down in 
their long trains, and fluttered their fans and heard 
airy nothings whispered in th^ir ears. "Wooded 
slopes rise high around, and this walk, deep down 
in a narrow valley, being quite invisible from the 
ordinary paths, is called the Underground Way. 



THE SOLITUDE. g^ 

The breath of the old days is here especially subtle 
and suggestive. 

The map of the place, as it was, tells of orange- 
ries, pleasure pavilions, rose and laurel gardens, 
labyrinths, artificial lakes and islands, and many 
things of whose magnificence few traces remain. 
The common-looking buildings, formerly dwellings 
of the cavaliers in attendance, stand in a row ; 
there are a few small houses with queer roofs ; 
the Schloss itself stands on its height in the 
centre of an open space, fine old w T oods around, 
and an unusually extended view, from its cupola, 
of a broad, peaceful plain, a village or two, the 
Suabian Alb to the south ; a straight, white-look- 
ing road intersects the meadows and woods, and 
leads to Ludwigsburg. This road was made by 
Carl Eugen, to avoid passing through Stuttgart, 
his choleric highness having had a grudge against 
the city at that time, — and indeed it has a spiteful 
air, with its utter disregard of hills and valleys, 
going straight as an arrow flies, never turning out 
for obstructions any more than the haughty duke 
would have turned aside for a subject. Fabulous 
stories are told of the speed with which his horse's 
hoofs used to clatter over this turnpike, and the 
incredibly short time in which, by frequently 
changing horses, he would arrive at his destina- 
tion. 

The romantic story of Francisca von Hohenheim 
and many interesting facts in Schiller's early life, 
during his attendance at the Carlsschule, a famous 
military academy, instituted by, and under the pat- 
ronage of, Carl Eugen, are inevitably interwoven 



62 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

in any history of the Solitude ; but both need more 
time than can be given at the close of so hasty a 
sketch. And indeed, from almost any point that 
might be taken here, threads wind off into a mass 
of stories and traditions far too wide-reaching to 
be more than hinted at when one is only making a 
little Ausjiug and carelessly following one's will on 
a fair April day. 




A DAY IN THE BLACK FOREST. 




" Zu Hirsau in den Triimmern 
Da wiegt ein Ulmenbaum 
Frischgriinend seine Krone 
Hoch iiberm Giebelsaum. " 

Uhland. 

NE of the loveliest spots in all Wtirtem- 
berg is Hirsau. It lies deep down in a 
valley on the Nagold, over which is a 
pretty stone bridge. High around rise 
the noble pines of the Black Forest, whose im- 
penetrable gloom contrasts with the tender green 
of spring meadows basking in the sunshine, and 
makes, with the fringe of elms and birches and 
willows along the banks of the stream, a most 
magical effect of light and shade. 

Blessings on the one of us who first said, " Let 
us see the old cloister at Hirsau ! " An ideal spring 
day, a particularly well-chosen few, a trip by rail 
to Alt-Hengstett, then a long, lovely tramp over 
the moss carpet of the Black Forest, inhaling the 
sweet breath of the pines, finding each moment a 
more exquisite flower, catching bewitching glimpses 
between the trees of silver streams hurrying 
along far down below us, — this is what it was 



64 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

like ; but the softness, the sweetness, the exhilara- 
tion of it all is not easy to indicate. The name 
itself, " Black Forest," sounds immensely gloomy 
and mysterious. Goblins and witches and shrieks 
and moans and pitfalls and all uncanny weird 
things haunted the Black Forest of which we used 
to read years ago. And what does it mean to us 
now 1 Magnificent old woods, paths that beckon 
and smile, softly whispering, swaying tree-tops, 
turf like velvet, sunlight playing fitfully among 
the stately pines, seeking entrance where it may, 
and air that must bring eternal youth in its ca- 
resses. It means forgetfulness of trammels and 
all sordid, petty things, and being in tune with 
the harmonies of nature. It means freedom and 
peace ; a " temple," indeed, with the pines con- 
tinually breathing their sweet incense and singing 
their sacred chants. There were in our party a 
professor or two, more than one poet, — indeed, it 
is said every other man in Suabia is a poet, — and 
a world-renowned art scholar and critic. They 
shook the dust of e very-day life from their feet, 
and were happy as boys ; one of them lay among 
the daisies, smiling like a child with the pure de- 
light of living in such air and amid such peaceful 
beauty. 

At the little Gasthaus in Hirsau, with the sign 
of the swan, we refreshed ourselves after our 
tramp. It is remarkable that poets, like clergymen, 
must also eat. After a few merry, graceful toasts 
and cooling draughts of the pleasant Landwein, we 
went to the cloister ruins. The work of excava- 
tion is still going on, much that we saw being but 



A DAY IN THE BLACK FOREST. (55 

recently brought to the light. There were a few 
massive old walls at wide distances apart ; the 
pavement of the aisles quite grass-grown between 
the low, broad, gray stones ; fair fields of tall grass 
bright with daisies and buttercups, and starry 
white flowers, — a fascinating mass of variegated 
brightness, catching the sunshine and swaying in 
the breeze ; a row of fine old Gothic windows ; a 
tower in the Romanisch style of the twelfth cen- 
tury, which we, I believe, call Norman ; a deep 
cellar where the monks of old stored their wines. 
Up a flight of stairs is a great bare room, where 
against the walls stand heavy wooden cases with 
carved borders, and in the ceiling is the same 
quaint carving slightly raised on a darker ground. 

The whole effect of the ruins conveys the idea 
of immense size. The church was, indeed, the 
largest in Germany except the cathedral at Ulm. 
It is here an unusually lovely, peaceful scene. The 
cloister ruins would be, anywhere, picturesque and 
interesting in themselves ; lying as they do above 
the village, framed by the beautiful Schwarzwald, 
they form a picture not easily forgotten. No far- 
extending view, nothing grand or imposing, only 
the exquisite, peaceful picture shut in by the dark- 
green hills ; quaint homes nestling among rosy 
apple-blossoms ; the great gray, stone Briinnen, 
where for years and years maideus have come to fill 
their buckets and chat in the twilight after the 
day's work is done ; the Nagold, silver in the sun- 
light ; the cloister, with its old-time traditions, — 
all so very, very far from the madding crowd. 

And the sweet legend of the origin of the clois- 



QQ ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

ter should be sung or spoken as one sees the pic- 
ture : How there was, in the year 645, a rich, 
pious widow, a relative of the knight of Calb, 
named Helizena, who was childless, and who had 
but one wish, namely, to devote herself to the ser- 
vice of God. She constantly prayed that God 
would open to her a way acceptable in his sight. 
Once in a dream she saw in the clouds a church, 
and below in a lovely valley three beautiful fir- 
trees growing from one stem ; and from the clouds 
issued a voice telling her that her prayer was heard, 
and that wherever she should find the plain with 
the three fir-trees she was to erect a church, the 
counterpart of that which she saw in the clouds. 
Awaking, the good Helizena, with holy joy and 
deep humility, took a maid and two pages and 
ascended a mountain from whose summit she 
could see all the surrounding country, and pres- 
ently espied the quiet plain and the three firs 
of her dream. Hurrying to the spot, weeping 
for joy, she laid her silken raiment and jewels 
at the foot of the tree, to signify that from that 
moment she consecrated herself and all she pos- 
sessed to the work. In three years the beautiful 
cloud-chnrch stood in stone in the fair valley, 
and afterwards, in 838, a cloister was erected 
with the aid of Count Erlafried of Calb. Under 
Abbot Wilhelm, in 1080, it was at the height 
of its prosperity, and was the model of peace 
and goodly living among all the other Benedictine 
monasteries. The abbot gathered so many monks 
about him that the cloister at last grew too nar- 
row, and he resolved to build a more spacious one. 



A DAY IN THE BLACK FOREST. (57 

This was indeed a labor of love, and the work was 
done entirely by his own people, his monks and 
laity. Noble lords and ladies helped to bring wood 
and stone and prepared mortar in friendly inter- 
course with peasants, their wives and daughters, — 
such zeal and Christian love did the abbot instil 
into the hearts of his flock. It is the ruins of this 
cloister which we see to day. 

An old German chronicle represents the place as 
little less than an earthly paradise : — 

" There was here a band of two hundred and sixty, full 
of love for God and one another. No discussion could 
be found there, no discontented faces. Everything was 
in common. No one had the smallest thing for himself ; 
indeed, no one called anything his own. Each went 
about his work in sweet content ; of disobedience no 
one even knew. Not only was there no rebuke and 
angry word, but also no idle, frivolous, mirth-provok- 
ing talk. Among this great mass of men within the 
cloister walls could be heard only the voices of the sing- 
ers and of them who knelt in prayer, and the sounds 
that came from the busy workrooms." 

These monks used to write much about music 
and poetry, and many learned, strong men were 
gathered there. The cloister was full of pictures, 
and the Kreuzgang had forty richly painted win- 
dows, with biblical scenes. A story is told of an 
old monk, Adelhard, who was twenty-three years 
blind, and received in his latter days the gift of 
second-sight. He foretold the day and hour of his 
death three years before it occurred, and also the 
destruction of the monastery. 

As Korner's poem says : — 



63 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

" In the cells and apartments sit fifty "brothers writ- 
ing many books, spiritual, secular, in many languages, 
— sermons, histories, songs, all painted in rich colors. 

" In the last cell towards the north sits a white- 
haired old man, leans his brow upon his hand, and 
writes, 'The enemy's hordes will break in, in seven 
years, and the cloister walls will be in flames." 

Whether the old gray monk was ever there or 
not, at least we know that the French, in 1692, 
destroyed the beautiful cloister, and its paintings 
and carvings and works of art were all lost, except 
some of the stained glass, a few of its painted 
windows being at Monrepos, near Ludwigsburg. 

The famous Hirsau elm, about which half the 
German poets have sung, is the most significant, 
touching, poetical thing imaginable. You feel its 
whole life-story in an instant, as if you had watched 
its growth through the long years ; how the 
young thing found itself, it knew not why, spring- 
ing up in the damp cloister earth, surrounded by 
four tall, cold, gray walls, above which indeed was 
a glimpse of heaven ; how it shot up and up, ever 
higher and higher, with the craving of all living 
things for sunlight and free air, never putting 
forth leaf or twig until it had attained its hope 
and could rest. Within the high walls is only the 
strong, tall, bare trunk, and far above, free and 
triumphant, the noble crown of foliage. 

Brave, beautiful elm, that dared to grow, im- 
prisoned in cruel stone ; that did not faint and die 
before it reached the longed-for warmth and light 
and sweetness ! 



THE LENNINGER THAL. 




TLGRIMS were we recently, making a 
clay's journey, not to gaze upon bones, 
rusty relics, and mouldy garments, but 
to see something fresh, fair, and alto- 
gether adorable, — the cherry-trees of the Len- 
ninger Thai in full blossom. From Stuttgart we 
went by rail to Kirchheim unter Teck, a railway 
terminus, where we were shown the palace occu- 
pied by Franciska von Hohenheim after the death 
of Herzog Carl, and a Denkmal erected to Conrad 
Widerhold, that brave and very obstinate Ger- 
man hero who held the famous Hohentwiel for- 
tress against the enemy, when even his own duke, 
Eberhard III., had ordered him to surrender it. 
Widerhold and his wife stand side by side, and you 
must look twice before you can tell which is the 
warrior. Kirchheim lies prettily in the Lauter 
Thai among the mountains. From there in an 
open carriage we drove on into the charming Len- 
ninger Valley, one of the most beautiful in the 
Alb, with the whole landscape smiling benignly 
beneath a wonderful sky, and air deliciously pure 
and soft ; past little brooks where the young, ten- 
der willows were beginning to leave out, through 



7Q ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

the little village of Dettingen, on and on over the 
broad chaussee, until we were fairly among the 
cherry-orchards. Bordering the road, running far 
back on the hill-slopes, shadowy, feathery, exqui- 
site, the snowy blossoms lay before our eyes, with 
the range of the Suabian Alb beyond, and many a 
peak and ruin old in story. This was the fresh 
morning of a perfect spring day, where the peace 
and loveliness of the scene — the fields of pure 
whiteness reaching out on both sides of us, with 
now and then a dash of pink from the rosy apple- 
blossoms — made us feel that a special blessing had 
fallen upon us as devotees at the shrine of Ceres. 
At evening, returning by another route, with the 
varying lights and golden bars and heavy, piled- 
up purple cloud-masses in the western sky, it was 
lovely with yet another loveliness. The same 
mountains showed us other outlines and assumed 
new expressions, and bold, proud Teck rose from 
the foam of blossoms at its feet, like a stern rock 
towering above surging waters. 

One of our experiences that day was becoming 
acquainted with Owen. Owen is not a man, as 
you may imagine, but only a very little village 
with crooked streets and queer old women, and 
that curious aspect to all its belongings which 
never grows less curious to some of us, though we 
ought to have become unmindful of it long ago. 
Owen is picturesque and dirty. " Ours at home 
are n't half so dirty or half so nice," we endeavor 
to explain to our German friends. 

At the inn where we drew up we were received 
by an admiring group of children, — three yellow 



THE LENNINGER TIIAL. *j-± 

heads rising above three great armfuls of wood, of 
the weight of which the little things seemed utterly 
unconscious in the excitement of seeing us. They 
stood, one above the other, on the dilapidated, 
crazy stone steps, while a bushy dog, whose hair 
looked as yellow and sun-faded as the children's, 
also made "great eyes" at us from the lowest 
stone. Out came mine host, and cleared away 
children and dog and woodpiles in a twinkling. 
This nattering reception occurred at the Krone. 
A large gilt crown adorned with what small boys 
at home call " chiney alleys " makes a fine appear- 
ance above these same tumble-down steps ; and 
directly beside them is a great barn-door, so near 
that you might easily mistake one entrance for the 
other and wander in among the beasties ; and 
benign Mistress Cow was serenely chewing her 
cud in her boudoir under the front stairs, we ob- 
served as we entered the house. 

Let no one faint when I say we ate our dinner 
here. Indeed, we have eaten in much worse places, 
and the dinner was far better than w r e thought 
could be evolved from a house with so many 
idiosyncrasies, so very prominent barn-door quali- 
ties, such mooings and lo wings in undreamed-of 
corners and at unexpected moments. However, we 
experienced an immense lightening of the spirits 
when trout were served, for it seemed as if we 
knew what this dish at least was made of. They 
were pretty silvery things with red spots, and had 
just been gleaming in the brook near by, beneath 
elms and birches and baby willows, and now they 
were butchered to make our holiday. 



72 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

The little restored Gothic church at Owen is 
more than a thousand years old, and its walled 
Kirchhof recalls the times when the villagers with 
their wives and children sought refuge here from 
the descent of robber knights. The dukes of 
Teck are buried within the church, and their 
arms and those of other old families, with quaint 
inscriptions about noble and virtuous dames, are 
interesting to decipher. The prettiest thing in 
the church was a spray of ivy which had crept 
through a hole in the high small-paned window, 
completely ivy-covered without, and came seeking 
something within the still stone walls, reaching 
out with all its tendrils, and seemed like the little, 
adventurous bird that flutters in through a church 
window on a hot summer afternoon, and makes a 
sleepy congregation open its heavy eyes. 

The altar-pictures are edifying works of art. 
Behind the little group in the "Descent from the 
Cross " rise a range of hills that look astonishingly 
like the Suabian Alb, with a genuine old German 
fortress perching on a prominent peak. Saint 
Lucia is also an agreeable object of contemplation, 
with a sword piercing her throat up to the hilt, 
the blade coming through finely on the other side, 
while her mildly folded hands, smirking of superior 
virtue and perfect complacency, make her as win- 
ning as a saint of her kind can be. 

Beyond Owen is the Wieland stein, or a Wie- 
landstein I should perhaps say, for Wielandsteins 
are as common in Germany as lovers' leaps in 
America ; and the story is always how the cruel 
king murdered the wife and children of Wieland 



THE LENNINGER TEAL. 73 

the smith and took him captive, granting him his 
life merely because of his skill in fashioning won- 
derful things from metals, but imprisoning him 
and maiming his feet that he might never escape. 
Wieland lived some time at court, and grew in 
favor with the king on account of his deft hands 
and clever designs. At length the king's young 
sons were missing and could not be found, though 
they were searched for many days, and the king 
was anxious and sorrowful. Then Wieland pre- 
sented him with two beautiful golden cups, at the 
sight of which the king was so pleased that he 
gave a feast ; and as he was drinking from the 
golden bowls and feasting with his nobles, Wieland 
flew away by means of two great golden wings he 
had for a long time been secretly fashioning, and, 
poising himself in mid-air, cried to the horrified 
king that he was drinking from the skulls of his 
sons, whom he, Wieland, had murdered out of re- 
venge. The people shot many arrows after him, 
but he soared away unharmed, his golden wings 
gleaming in the sunlight until he disappeared be- 
hind the hills. 

The ruin of the old Teck castle is in this neigh- 
borhood, and the Sybillen Loch, a grotto where a 
celebrated witch used to dwell, who differed from 
her species in general, inasmuch as she was a good 
witch. The old chronicles say she was an exem- 
plary person, always delighting in good deeds. 
Her sons, however, were bad, quarrelled, stole from 
the world and one another, and even, upon one 
occasion, from her, and then ran away. Sybilla in 
her fiery chariot went in pursuit, and to this day a 



74 - ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

fair, bright stripe over orchard, field, and vineyard, 
always fresher and greener than the surrounding 
country, marks her course. How a fiery chariot 
could produce this beautifying effect is not to be 
questioned by an humble individual whose home is 
in a land where ruined castles and legend upon 
legend do not rise from every hill-top. Another 
story is that the fertile stripe was made by Sybilla's 
chariot-wheels, as she left forever the family to 
which she had always belonged. The last duke of 
Teck lay after a battle resting under a tree, and saw 
her passing with averted face, his arms lying at her 
feet, while she extended a stranger's in her hands, 
which signified ruin to his house; and the prophecy 
was fulfilled, for the duke outlived his twelve sons, 
and his arms and title were adopted by the counts 
of Wiirtemberg, who then became dukes of Wiir- 
temberg and Teck. All these interesting things 
are visible to the naked eye. The fresh green 
stripe is unmistakable ; and the point in the air 
where Wieland hovered on his golden wings above 
the cliff can easily be discerned with a very little 
imagination. 

A visit to a typical Suabian pastor, in another 
little village on this road, was a pleasant episode. 
A hale, handsome old gentleman of seventy, with 
a small black cap on his silvery locks and an in- 
veterate habit of quoting Greek, looking at us with 
a simple, childlike air, as if we too were learned. 
His house has stone floors, low square rooms, se- 
verely simple in their appointments. The arms of 
a bishop of some remote century are on the inner 
wall by the front entrance, and a little farther on 



THE LENNINGER THAL. 75 

is an aperture, through which tho cow of the olden 
time was wont to placidly gaze out upon hurrying 
retainers. The cow of that period seems to have 
had comfortable apartments in the middle of the 
house. The Suabian cow of the present time 
earns her hay by the sweat of her brow, toiling in 
the fields. 

The good old pastor has a love amounting to 
adoration for his garden, every inch of which he 
ha3 worked over and beautified, till it seems to be 
the expression of all the poetry and romance which 
the outward conditions of his frugal, rigid life re- 
press. Full of nooks and arbors, comfortable low 
chairs and benches, where the blue forget-me-nots 
look as if they bloom indeed for happy lovers ; trees 
whose great drooping branches close around retreats 
which can only be designed for tender tete-a-tetes ; 
irregular little paths, wandering up and down 
and about, always ending in something delightful, 
always beckoning, inviting, smiling, amid flowers 
and foliage so fresh and luxuriant, you feel that 
every petal and leaf is known and loved by the 
white-haired old man. His favorite seat is at the 
end of a narrow, winding way at the foot of a mag- 
nificent elm. There he sits and looks, over the 
brook that sings to his sweet roses and pansies, 
upon broad meadow-lands and fields of grain ex- 
tending to the Suabian hills, with their wealth 
of beauty and meaning and tradition. He sleeps 
and rests and thinks there after dinner, he tells 
us, and perhaps that is all ; but I believe, when 
the old man is gone, a volume of manuscript 
poems will be discovered hidden away among his 



76 



ONE YEAR ABROAD. 



sermons and Greek tomes, — a volume of love 
poems, sonnets, dreamings of all that his life 
crowds out into his garden, and that only in his 
garden he has been able to express, — all the un- 
spoken sweetness, all the unsung songs. 




FKANCISKA VON HOHENHEIM. 




HILIPPUS Aureolus Theophrastus Para- 
celsus Bombastus is a personage whom 
we know, it must be confessed, more 
through the medium of Robert Brown- 
ing than through our own historical researches; 
and we were therefore filled with wonder to learn 
that, in addition to the modest cognomen above, de 
Hohenheim also belonged to his name. This same 
Hohenheim we have recently visited. Paracelsus 
never lived there, to be sure, and was born far away 
in Switzerland. Browning puts him in Wiirzburg, 
in Alsatia, in Constantinople ; and a solid German 
authority declares he lived in Esslingen, where 
his laboratory is still exhibited, and in proof men- 
tions that in this neighborhood was, not many 
years ago, a Weingartner whose name was Bombas- 
tes von Hohenheim, a descendant of Paracelsus. 
However, he lived nowhere, everywhere, and any- 
where, I presume, as best suited such a conjurer, 
alchemist, philosopher, and adventurer, and went 
wandering about from land to land, remaining in 
one place so long as the people would have faith 
in his learning, his incantations and magic arts ; 
but what concerns us now is simply that he was 



73 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

connected with the Hohenheim family, who, in the 
old days, occupied the estate which still bears its 
name. 

To Hohenheim is a pleasant walk or drive, as 
you please, from Stuttgart. A castle, adjacent 
buildings, lawns, and fruit-trees are what there is 
to see at the first glance, — at the second, many 
practical things in the museum connected with 
the Agricultural College, which is what Hohen- 
heim at present is ; models, and collections of 
stones and birds and beasts, bones and skeletons, 
and other uncanny objects, pretty woods, grain, 
seeds, etc. Students from the ends of the earth 
come here, and from all ranks, — sons of rich peas- 
ants and also young men of family. An Hun- 
garian count is here at present, and youths from 
Wallachia, Russia, Sweden, America, Australia, 
Spain, Italy, and Greece, — China too, for all I 
know to the contrary, — with of course many Ger- 
mans, learning practical and theoretical farming. 
We sat under the pear-trees which were showering 
white blossoms around us, ate our supper to for- 
tify us for our homeward Avalk, watched the sheep 
come home and the students walking in from the 
fields with their oxen-carts. They wore blue 
blouses and high boots, and cracked their long 
whips with a jaunty air, more like Plunket in 
" Martha " than veritable farmers. From the bal- 
cony opening from the largest salon we looked 
upon pretty woods, and the whole chain of the Sua- 
bian Alb, with Lichtenstein, Achalm, and other 
points of interest to be studied through a tele- 
scope. 



FRANCISKA VON HOHENHEIM. 79 

This is, then, what Hohenheim now is, — a place 
where you go and look about a little, walk through 
large empty halls and long corridors affording 
glimpses of the simple quarters of the students, 
see a pleasant landscape, and, in short, enjoy an 
hour of unquestionably temperate pleasure. What 
it was as the seat of the Hohenheim family, which 
is mentioned as early as the year 1100, we do not 
know; but under Duke Carl Eugen of Wurtem- 
berg, in the last century, it was a sort of Ver- 
sailles, if all accounts be true : magnificent parks 
and gardens, Roman ruins near Gothic towers and 
chapels, Egyptian pyramids and Swiss chalets, 
catacombs, artificial waterfalls, baths, hothouses, 
grottos with Corinthian pillars, a Flora temple 
with lovely arabesques on its silver walls, and the 
palace itself, rising proud and stately at the end of 
the park, furnished with every luxury, and filled 
with rare vases and pictures. Four colossal statues 
stand now in one of the halls, arrayed in garments 
which, in that freer time, they certainly could not 
boast. The raiment is of cloth, dipped, stiffened 
so that it resembles marble, unless you examine 
it too closely. No doubt it is more agreeable that 
those huge figures are somewhat clothed upon, but 
it does seem too absurd to think of ordering a new 
coat for "Apollo" when his old one gets shabby. 
Making minute investigations, we discovered he 
had already had several, wearing the last one out- 
side of the others, as if to protect himself from 
the inclemency of the weather. 

All the old magnificence was lavished by Her- 
zog Carl upon Franciska von Hohenheim, — his 



gO ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

"Franzel," as he called her in the soft Suabisch, — 
whose most romantic story is, par excellence, the 
thing of interest here, and the Suabians must love 
it, they tell it so very often. 

From many narratives I gather the life-story of 
a woman who, in spite of the stain upon her name, 
is deeply revered in Wiirtemberg for her strong, 
sweet influence upon its wild duke, for her wisdom 
and gentleness, and the good that through her 
came upon the realm. 

She was a daughter of the Freiherr von Bernar- 
din, a noble of ancient family and limited income. 
Franciska lived far removed from the gayety of 
courts, of which she and her sisters in their castle 
near Aalen rarely heard. When she was scarcely 
sixteen her father gave her hand to a Freiherr von 
Leutrum, a fussy, stuffy old man, who wrapped 
himself in furs even in summer, and was so con- 
spicuously ugly the boys in the street would mock 
at him when he stood at his window. His great 
head, on a broad, humped back, scarcely reached 
the sill. 

In addition, a small intellect, hot temper, and 
suspicious nature made him yet more of a mon- 
ster; but Franciska was poor, and it appears it 
was considered then, as it would be now, a good 
match, as Von Leutrum was of an old family and 
rich. Whether the historians paint him blacker 
than he deserves in order to make Franciska white 
in contrast, is not easy to say. It certainly has 
that effect occasionally, however. Beauty, then, 
married the Beast. In 1770 Herzog Carl Eugen 
came to Pforzheim, where the nobles of the neigh- 



FRAN C IS K A VON HOHENHEIM. gl 

borhood, among them Baron von Leutrum, with 
hi3 young wife, assembled to form his court. 

Franciska was no famous beauty. She had, 
however, a tall, graceful figure, rich blond hair, 
and was very winning with her fresh, joyful ways, 
and a certain indescribable sweetness and gentle- 
ness of manner. The duke, from the first, singled 
her out by marked attention, which undoubtedly 
nattered her, coming from so famous, clever, and 
fascinating a man ; and it is also probable that she 
made no especial effort to repulse the homage in 
which she could see no harm. He was then forty- 
two, — a man of stately beauty, one of the most 
renowned European princes of that time, with a 
strong and highly cultivated intellect, and of most 
winning manners where he cared to please. It 
also appears he could be a bear, a savage, and a 
tyrant when he willed. 

It was, then, scarcely surprising that a girl mar- 
ried at sixteen to a fossil like Leutrum, who neg- 
lected and abused her, should be bewildered by 
the distinguished attention offered by her prince. 
Meanwhile Leutrum waxed more and more jealous, 
until one day in a rage, on account of remarks of 
the courtiers, he struck his wife in the face. 

The duke, furious at this, insisted upon taking 
Franciska under his protection. But she, though 
agonized with fear and abhorrence of her husband, 
yet knowing too well her feeling for the duke, chose 
to leave the court at once and return with Leutrum 
to their castle. 

Carl Eugen, never scrupulous as to means when 
he had anything to gain, caused a wheel of Leu- 



82 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

tram's coach to be put into a state of precarious 
weakness, so that, going through some woods not 
far from Pforzheim, the carriage broke down, when 
the duke appeared, rode off with the trembling, 
miserable, happy Franciska, leaving Von Leutrum 
alone with his broken carriage and his rage. 

The duke had been married for political reasons 
at eighteen to a princess of Bavaria, with whom 
he had lived but a year or two, their natures being 
strongly incompatible. He, however, a Roman 
Catholic, could not free himself from his first 
marriage until the death of his wife released him 
in 1784, when he married Franciska. 

The remarkable thing in her history is, that the 
voice of no contemporary is raised against her. 
Noble ladies of unblemished name visited her as 
" Grafin von Hohenheim," and all testimony unites 
in praising her wisdom, sweetness, and grace, and 
her almost miraculous influence for good upon the 
duke. 

" He found in her womanly grace and devoted 
love, the deepest appreciation of the beautiful and 
good, exquisite taste and tact, a strong, warm in- 
terest in his career and calling, wise counsel given 
in her soft, womanly words, and a heart for his 
people. 

" In love and sorrow, in matters earnest and 
light, in his difficult affairs of state, in enjoyment 
of the beautiful in art and nature, she was ever 
by his side, filled with perfect appreciation of all 
that moved him." 

She taught him gradually his duty towards his 
folk, which the wild, haughty duke had sadly ig- 



FRAN CI SKA VON nOUENIIEIM. g3 

nored, and she, herself, was always loved and 
revered by them. 

She was graceful and sparkling in society, not 
wearing her sorrows upon her sleeve, but in her 
private life and letters are marks of lifelong grief. 

" If I could tell you my whole story," she writes 
to a friend in 1783, "if you could know the so- 
lemnity and repentance with which I look back 
upon it, you would withhold from me neither your 

pity nor your prayers Had I had in my 

sixteenth year, when, utterly inexperienced, I en- 
tered society with not the slightest knowledge of 
the world, left entirely to myself, surrounded by 
scenes whose meaning I could not grasp, — had I 
then had one true friend to warn me, to advise 
me ; had his reason, his heart, his pureness of 
deed, inspired my respect and trust, indeed — in- 
deed — I might have been a better woman." 

Later, after a delightful evening at the Princess 
of Dessau's, where Lavater also was, she wrote : — 

" I was inexpressibly moved by your assurance 
that you thought of me in this circle. Could [ 
have felt worthier of such society, the pleasure 
would undoubtedly have been more unalloyed. 
But, as it was — Still I must not complain." 

Such, briefly, is her story. She lived with the 
duke at the Solitude as well as here, and Hohen- 
heim he made for her as beautiful as a fairy palace. 
He troubled neither her nor himself with scruples. 
His conscience was, indeed, not tender, and his life 
with her was unquestionably so innocent and 
idyllic in comparison with his mad past, that, to 
him at least, it no doubt seemed blameless. He 



84 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

loved her faithfully till his death, wrote to her 
when absent for a day or two as his good angel, 
with utter reverence as well as tenderest love. 
The proud respected her ; the poorest and hum- 
blest came to her with their wants and sorrows. 

She died in 1811 in her small, quiet court at 
Kirchheim unter Teck, where she had resided after 
the death of the duke ; but her story and the re- 
membrance of her eventful life will always haunt 
quiet Hohenheim, and invest it with a romance it 
cannot otherwise claim for itself. 




° ^\ 



"NUREMBERG THE ANCIENT." 




HE breeze of morning stole in and kissed 
our cheeks and whispered, "You have 
a day and a half to spend in dear, 
delicious old Nuremberg, — be up and 
doing ! " Only a day and a half, and yet how in- 
finitely better than no day at all there ! We 
came, we saw, and were conquered, even by the 
huge knockers with bronze wreaths of Cupids and 
dragons' heads, the ornate, intricate locks, the 
massive doors, before we were within the portals 
of those proud patrician palaces with their stately 
inner courts and galleries, their frescos, painted 
windows and faded tapestries, time-stained gran- 
deur, and all their relics of mediaeval magnifi- 
cence. 

0, we stretched our day and a half well, and 
filled it full of treasures, and our hearts with 
lovely thoughts and pictures of the unique old 
town, its high quaint gables, stone balconies, beau- 
tiful fountains, double line of walls, and seventy 
sentinel towers ; its castle and wide moat, where 
now great trees grow and prim little gardens ; its 
arched bridges and streams, with shadows of the 
drooping foliage on the banks ; its oriel windows ; 



3(3 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

its narrow, shady ways and odd corners ; its memo- 
ries of Albrecht Diirer and Hans Sachs, of Kaiser 
and knight and Meistersinger, — its Nuremberg- 
ishness ! 

The St. Lorenz Church was onr first halting- 
place. The whole world knows that its portal and 
painted windows are beautiful, and that it retains 
all the rich old objects of the Roman ritual ; that 
being the condition under which Nuremberg- 
pranced over in a twinkliug to Protestantism, and 
people were ordered by the municipal authorities 
to believe to-day what they had disbelieved yes- 
terday ; and most of the world, perhaps, has seen 
the tabernacle for the vessels of the sacrament, 
but they who have not can never know from words 
how it rests on the bowed forms of its sculptor, 
Adam Kraft, and his two pupils and assistants, and 
rises like frozen spray sixty-four feet in the choir, 
with the warm light from the painted windows 
coloring its exquisite traceries and carvings. It 
looks like a holy thought or a hymn of praise 
caught in stone, aspiring heavenwards. 

We saw there heavy gold chalices from old, old 
times, and some Gobelin tapestry only recently 
discovered hidden away; one scene represented 
the weighing of the soul of St. Lawrence to see if 
it were too light for heaven. The saint's soul had 
a shape, in fact was an infant's body, and the Devil 
was crouching near b}', and St. Lawrence, full- 
grown, stood waiting, anxious to know his fate. 

Then came a few hours in the German Museum, 
where, as usual in such places, the weary lagged 
behind, the elegant looked blase, the contrary- 



"NUREMBERG THE ANCIENT: 1 37 

minded saw the wrong thing first, the energetic 
pushed valiantly on, striving to see all and remem- 
ber all, from earliest forms of sculpture down 
through the ages, — all the gold and silver and 
carvings and costumes, the immense square green 
stoves, with the warm, cosy seat for the old grand- 
mother in the corner ; to glance at rare old lace 
without neglecting the ancient caps and combs and 
gewgaws ; to look long at a few of the pictures, — 
the great one of DUrer's, "Otto at the Grave of 
Charlemagne," is here, you know, — and so our 
straggling party wandered on through corridor 
and chamber and staircase, past knights in effigy, 
some of whom looked like such jolly old souls, with 
gallons of wine beneath their breastplates, past a 
memorial tablet to a baby prince who died dim 
ages ago, to whom a small death-angel is offering 
an apple ; and then, after seeing the bear, who 
guards a glass case of precious things in gold and 
silver, lowered down to his domain every night, 
and after sprinkling beer on his nose to see if he 
were of German parentage, we gathered ourselves 
together and wondered if we quite liked museums. 
You see so much more than you can comprehend ; 
you see so much more than you want to see ; you 
feel so astoundingly ignorant ; you have informa- 
tion thrust upon you so ruthlessly. One wilful 
maiden says, " I '11 go and live on a desert island, 
provided no one will show me an object of interest." 
Then in the shady cloisters we drank foaming 
beer with our German friends, and gathered 
strength for our next onslaught ; and I beg no 
one to be captious about the length and out-of- 



38 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

breath character of this paragraph, for it is quits 
in keeping with our Nuremberg visit, with worlds 
to see in a little day and a half. 

There was the old Rath Haus with the Durer 
frescos and the Durer house and pictures, which 
everybody mentions ; and the rude, dark little den 
of a kitchen, which nobody to my knowledge has 
ever deigned to mention, where Mrs. Xantippe 
Durer used to rattle her sauce-pans and scold her 
Mann. There was the Fraumkirche and St. Sebald, 
rich in painted windows and sculpture. In one 
room, so rich and dark with its oak wainscoting 
and Gobelin tapestry, we involuntarily searched 
behind the arras for Polonius, and then stared 
silently and felt quite flippant before the antique 
candelabra and Persian rugs and hopelessly inde- 
scribable ever-to-be-coveted furniture within those 
memory-laden walls. An antique, impressive writ- 
ing-table was a model of rich, quaint beauty. 
Poems and romances would feel proud and pleased 
to simply write themselves under its aegis, and 
what a delicious aroma of the past would cling to 
them ! 

We visited the castle, of course, and streams of 
information about the Hohenzollerns were poured 
upon us. AVe were wicked enough to orjoy our- 
selves particularly among the instruments of tor- 
ture, — exhibited by the jolliest, fattest, most debo- 
nair Mrs. Jarley in the world. She regaled us 
with awful tales, that sounded worse than the 
" Book of Martyrs," and we were not disgusted, 
neither did we faint or scream. There was a 
lamentable want of feeling, and a marked inclina- 



"NUREMBERG THE ANCIENT." §9 

tion to laugh prevailed in our party. Indeed, we 
saw some sweet things there, — a hideous dragon's 
head, worn by women who beat their husbands ; 
a kind of yoke in which two quarrelsome women 
were harnessed ; a huge collar, with a bell at- 
tached, for gossips ; and an openwork iron mask, 
with a great protruding, rattling tongue, for in- 
veterate slanderers. We made liberal proposals 
to our jolly show-woman for a few of these articles, 
thinking we might be able to send them where 
they were needed, and strongly inclined to favor 
their readoption. An iron nose a foot long was 
worn by thieves, and the article stolen hung on 
the end of it. 

It is grievous to think there will come a time 
when people who visit Nuremberg will see no 
walls and towers and moats. They are pulling 
down the walls at present, for they are as incon- 
venient as they are picturesque. Heavy teams 
and people on foot seeking egress and ingress at 
one time through the narrow passages in the mas- 
sive structure, the city cramped, its growth re- 
tarded, dangerous accidents, as well as the most 
reasonable grounds in a commercial point of view, 
lead the wise to destroy something selfish tourists 
would fain preserve intact. But "if I were king 
of France, or, still better, pope of Rome," or em- 
peror of Germany, I 'd let the commerce go else- 
where where there is room for it, and guard old 
Nuremberg jealously as a precious, beautiful me- 
morial and heirloom from ancestors who have slept 
for centuries. 

The Johannes Cemetery here is the only lovely 



90 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

one I have yet seen in Germany. It is not beau- 
tiful in itself, as our cemeteries are ; but the solem- 
nity, the dignity of death is here, and no gaudy 
colors and tinsel wreaths jar upon your mood and 
pain you. Only great flat, gray stones, tablets 
with the arms in bronze of the old Nuremberg 
patricians, tell us wanderers who lies beneath. It 
was like a solemn poem to be there deciphering 
the proud armorial bearings on the great blocks 
placed there centuries ago, and the sweet-brier 
blooming all around with such an unconscious air 
on its pale pink blossoms, like fair young faces. 
One of Columbus's crew lies there. So many old 
names and dates ! 

We plucked a few leaves from Diirer's grave : — 

" Emigravit is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies, 
Dead he is not, but departed, for the artist never dies ; 
Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair, 
That lie once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed 
its air." 




SOME WURTEMBERG TOWNS. 




HE gardener gave it to the milkmaid and 
the milkmaid gave it to the errand boy, 
the errand-boy gave it to the cook, who 
gave it to the head-waiter, who sold it 
to the individual who presented it to me. " It " 
w T as a bunch of great, sweet, half-blown June 
roses, that hung glowing on their stalks in their 
native garden at dawn, and before noon had expe- 
rienced this life of change and adventure. It all 
happened in Wasseralfingen, a little town, where 
nothing else so momentous occurred during our 
brief visit, because it was Sunday, but where 
usually the celebrated iron- works make an im- 
mense disturbance, and interest visitors of a prac- 
tical turn of mind. Our German friends bewailed 
the absence of the noise of the machinery on our 
account ; believing that every American is born 
with a passionate devotion to mechanics, which 
increases through life, to the exclusion of a love of 
the beautiful. Recently, after relating a romantic 
story about a place on the Rhine, a German gen- 
tleman concluded his tale of love and chivalry by 
telling us that the Princess Somebody had estab- 
lished a girls' school there, — " which will interest 



92 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

you as Americans more than the story," he added, 
with perfect honesty and naivete. 

" And why ? " we meekly ask. 

" Because Americans are practical and like use- 
ful things," he responds cheerfully, with as thor- 
ough a conviction as if he had said that two and 
two made four. 

We made no useless effort to induce him to be- 
lieve that the thought of sixty or eighty bread- 
and-butter misses does not enhance for us the 
charm of a tradition-hannted spot, nor did we 
struggle to impress our friends' minds in Was- 
seralfingen that its Sabbath stillness was more 
agreeable to us than the stir and rush of the 
works. There are some fixed ideas in the mind 
of the average German which a potent hand ought 
to seize and shake out. " Why don't you write 
letters to Germans about America, instead of to 
Americans about Germany'?" suggests' a clever 
German friend. " They seem to be more needed." 
It* might really be worth while if Teutonic tenacity 
of opinion were not too huge a thing for a feeble 
weapon to slay. 

To return to our Wasseralfingen, — most curious 
name ! — it was pretty enough to look upon, as 
indeed most places in Wiirtemberg are. It has 
its nicely-laid-out little park or Anlagen, with a 
statue in the middle of it ; and this is what small 
manufacturing towns at home are not apt to waste 
much time upon, unfortunately for their children 
and their children's children. An inn nestled 
among the trees, with irregular wings and low, 
broad roofs, and a very broad landlord, who looked 



SOME WURTEMBERG TOWNS. 93 

like a beer-mug. gave us comfortable shelter for a 
night, and supper and breakfast in its garden, — 
supper with lights and pipes and beer-bottles, and 
cheerful conversation all around. 

A short trip by rail brought us to Heidenheim, 
past fields of waving grain and pretty hills, shad- 
ows of great trees falling on velvety meadows, oats 
rising and falling like billows in the morning breeze, 
and scarlet seas of poppies. Never anywhere have 
I seen such a glory of poppies ! Miles of them 
on both sides of the road, gleaming and glowing 
as the sunlight kissed them. 

And then Heidenheim, a pretty town given to 
manufactures, to factories and mills, with the ruins 
of its castle Hellenstein on the height, and its 
memories reaching far back to Roman times. 
Here lived knights who were princes of profligacy, 
and gloried in their extravagance ; who shod their 
steeds with silver and gold, and flung jewels away 
like water. One of them longed to have his whole 
estate transformed into a strawberry, that he could 
swallow it all in one instant. Of course this fam- 
ily came to a bad end. It spent all its money, 
and its castles got out of repair; the last of its 
armor was sold for old iron, and the last of the 
race died a pauper. 

The ruins retain traces of Roman architecture 
in the earliest walls, with various additions in 
later times, and are not especially interesting upon 
close acquaintance. The old well sunk deep in 
the foundation of natural rock, where you pay ten 
cents and see a woman drop a stone three hundred 
and eighty-five feet, and w T ait breathlessly until 



94 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

you hear the dull plash deep down in the dark- 
ness, is their most exciting feature. The woman 
offered to give us some water, but it requires a 
whole hour to get it up, and we felt suspicious 
of what might be lying in those uncanny depths. 

On the shady side of the castle, with broad 
reaches of fertile field and belts of wood lying be- 
fore our contented gaze, we listened to Volkslieder, 
so old and sweet they carried our hearts back into 
dim ages, and we strongly felt the tie that binds 
us to the race where such strains have their birth. 
Suddenly, as our singers ceased, a group of village 
children sitting on a block of stone at a short dis- 
tance took up the refrain, — an irregular row of 
flaxen heads against the light, their forms promi- 
nent against the deep, peaceful background, sing- 
ing away with such zest we could only be silent 
and listen. Song after song, in praise of their 
loved land, they sang; all sweet, whether the 
smallest ones could always keep in tune or not. 
They told how Eberhard im Bart could lay his 
head on the knee of his poorest peasant and sleep 
in peace till morning broke, and many another 
sweet, old story ; and, keeping time with their 
heads and making daisy-chains with their hands, 
they shouted, — 

"Beautiful Suabia is our Heimath Land!" 

Truly you can forgive the Germans for a mul- 
titude of sins when you hear how and what their 
common people sing. 



IN A GARDEN. 




GARDEN by the water's edge, — a gar- 
den where clematis and woodbine and 
grape-vines run all over their trellises 
and up the graceful young locust-trees 
and down over the stone-wall to meet the w 7 ater 
plashing pleasantly below, and reach out every- 
where that vine-audacity can suggest in an utter 
abandonment of luxuriance ! — a garden where su- 
perb blood-red roses are weighed down by a sense 
of their own sweetness, and pure white ones look 
tall and stately and cool and abstracted by their 
side. At the right a point of land extends into 
the lake, so thickly covered with trees that from 
here it looks like a little forest, and the houses 
are almost concealed in the fresh green ; and the 
trees look taller than anything except a funny old 
building that was once a cloister, and is now the 
royal castle, and has two queer, tall towers that 
rise far above the tree-tops at the extremity of 
the point. At the left, faint and shadowy in the 
distance, rise the Alps, and the mountains of 
Tyrol. There are bath-houses along the shore. 
Small boys who think they " would be mermen 
bold " are prancing about gayly in the water. On 



95 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

a rocky beach, peasant-women in bright-colored 
dresses are standing by tubs, dipping garments in 
the lake and wringing them dry. Some of them 
are kneeling. The sun is warm, and beats down 
on their uncovered heads, and the work is hard, 
and I don't suppose the} 7 have an} 7 idea they are 
making a picture of themselves, on the rocky fchore 
with the background of trees. But everybody is a 
picture this morning. There is a young man stand- 
ing in a row-boat, which an old fisherman lazily 
propels here and there before my eyes. The youth 
is really statuesque, balancing himself easily in 
the dancing boat, strong, supple, graceful, his arm 
extending the long fishing-rod. A rosebud of a 
girl in a white morning-suit and jaunty sailor-hat 
leans over the railing of a pavilion built out into 
the lake from the garden, and also patiently holds 
a fishing-rod, looking like a " London Society " 
illustration, as she gazes intently with drooping 
eyelashes into the water. 

There are people reading, sketching, studying 
their Baedeckers, drinking their coffee or beer, in 
comfortable nooks through the pretty garden. All 
is quiet and restful, with only the rippling of 
the water and the shouts of the merry mermen to 
break the stillness. Now does n't it seem as if one 
ought to write an exceptionally pleasant letter 
from so pleasant a spot ? But, alas ! there is not 
much to say about it when once you have tried to 
tell how it looks, — that it is a calm, peaceful, pretty 
place, where you could stay a whole summer and 
lose all feverish desires to explore and climb and 
see sights. To sit here in the garden, leaning on 



IN A GARDEN. 



97 



the wall among the vines, is happiness enough. 
In the morning early, the lake smiles at you and 
talks to you, and you see far away great masses 
of rose-color and pearl-gray, with snowy sum- 
mits gleaming in the sunshine, and your eyes are 
blessed with their first view of the Alps. The 
outline of the opposite shore is misty and many- 
colored, and has also its noble heights. At sunset, 
too, is the garden a dreamy, blissful spot, as the 
little boats float about in the golden lights, and 
« the water and the mountains assume all possible 
lovely hues, then sink away in a deep violet, and 
the stars come out and German love-songs go up 
to meet them. 

Yes, it is a satisfying spot. If there 's a serpent 
here, he keeps himself wonderfully well concealed. 
We have n't caught a glimpse of him, and we are 
wise enough not to search for him. It 's an ad- 
mirable place to be lazy, but it is n't very good 
for letters. Things hinder so, you know. You 
listen to the water, and your pencil forgets to go. 
You get lost in contemplation of the flapping of 
the ducks' feet, and make profound studies of 
their mechanism, and enviously wish you had 
something of the sort at your command, so that 
you could sail about in the cool, clear water as 
unconcerned as they, and with no more effort. 
Funniest of ducks that they are ! — so pampered 
by the attention and bread-crumbs of summer 
guests that their complacency exceeds even ordi- 
nary duck self-satisfaction, and they act as if they 
thought they were all swans. 

It occurs to me somebody may feel a faint curi- 



93 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

osity to know where it all is. Ou the Lake of 
Constance, or the Bodensee, which, if you want 
useful information, is forty-two miles long, eight 
miles wide, is fed principally by the Rhine, and 
whose banks belong to five different States, — 
Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, Baden, Switzerland, and 
Austria ; a sheet of water whose shores are green 
and thickly wooded, where gay little steamers 
run, constantly displaying the flags of their sev- 
eral countries, between the principal places on the 
lake, and wherever you go you have beautiful 
mountain scenery. You see the Alps, the moun- 
tains of Bavaria, the Baden hills, the Tyrol, and 
you don't always know which is which ; but they 
pile themselves up grandly among the clouds, one 
range behind the other, in a way that to the un- 
accustomed vision does not exactly admit of label- 
ling, and you don't care what their names are. 
You are content to feel their beauty, to wonder 
and be silent. 

This particular place on the lake is Friedrichs- 
hafen. It is really a new place and a commer- 
cial place, — and these adjectives are certainly not 
attractive, - — but then the newness is not con- 
spicuous, and the commerce, so far as we summer 
birds of passage are concerned, almost invisible. 

The king and queen of Wiirtemberg come here 
every summer, and are here at present. The Em- 
peror of Germany and the Grand Duke of J3aden 
are on the Island of Mainau. 

It may be a busy place, but it does not seem 
so. Content and rest pervade the atmosphere. 
Serenity is written on every face. It may be 



IN A GARDEN. 99 

many people would weary of its roses and the rip- 
ple of the water ; of its gardens, that look as if they 
were growing direetly out of the lake ; of the blue, 
hazy, changing mountains far a way; of its perfect 
quiet : but there are others who would love it well, 
and who would not tire of it in many a long sum- 
mer day. 




LINDAXJ AND BREGENZ. 




UF WIEDERS0HEN, and not Lebeivohl, 
we said to pleasant Friedrichshafen, as 
the little steamer left those kindly green 
shores and we sailed away, not for a year 
and a day, like the owl and the pussy cat in the 
beautiful pea-green boat, but for an hour or so 
only. There were many curious people to watch 
on board, but the most monopolizing sight was two 
Catholic priests devouring a chicken, or rather de- 
vouring chickens. They had, on the seat between 
them, a basket large enough for a flock of Hiihn- 
chen — boiled, dissected, and only too tempting to 
the priestly appetite — to repose in. And they had 
the lake as a receptacle for the bones. What more 
could they desire I If we could have suggested 
anything it would have been — napkins, because it 
was requiring too much work of their fingers to use 
them as knives and forks, and then to wipe their 
mouths on them. The zeal with which the holy 
men tore the tender meat from the bones and 
showered the remnants in the water, and particu- 
larly the endurance they exhibited, made us hope 
they evinced as much fervor and devotion in car- 
ing for their human flocks. 



LINDA U AND BREGENZ. ^Ql 

To Lindau then we came, having, as we ap- 
proached, charming mountain scenery. The town 
is on an island, connected with the mainland by an 
embankment and railway bridge. It is a little 
place, but very striking as you look at it from the 
water, having a lofty monument (a statue in bronze 
of Maximilian II.), a picturesque old Roman tower, 
and, at the entrance of the harbor, a tine light- 
house, and a great marble lion on a high pedes- 
tal, guarding the little haven and his Bavarian 
land. We remained part of a day here, having 
before our eyes a beautiful picture, — the moun- 
tains of Switzerland directly across the lake, nar- 
row at this point, with the lighthouse and the 
proud, ever- watchful Bavarian lion rising, bold 
and sentinel-like, in the foreground. You look 
between these two over the placid water to the 
heights beyond. 

From Lindau w'e sailed to Bregenz, where the 
lake and mountains have quite another expression. 
It would be difficult to say which is the most 
attractive place on the Bodensee. You feel "How 
happy could I be with either, were t' other dear 
charmer away," and it is of course a question of 
individual taste. One person prefers the moun- 
tains near, another watches them lovingly from a 
distance. One likes to live on low land by the 
water's edge, and look up to the mountain-tops ; 
another perches himself high, and finds his happi- 
ness in looking down upon the lake and off to other 
heights. But the shores are lovely everywhere, 
much frequented yet quiet, crowded with villas, 
private cottages, hotels, yet secluded and restful 
if one chooses. 



102 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

Bregenz is a quiet place, a real country-place, 
with mountain views and mountain excursions 
without end. The common people have intelligent, 
happy faces, pleasant, cheerful ways, quickness of 
repartee, and civility. The women give you a 
smiling " Gruss Gott." The commonest man takes 
off his hat as you pass, and if you go by a group 
of rollicking school-boys every hat comes off cour- 
teously. 

Gebhardsberg is the first place to which people 
usually go from Bregenz. We went, as in duty 
bound. It is a mountain — a castle — a pilgrim- 
age church — a view ; and to say that one com- 
mands a view of the entire lake, the valley of the 
Bregenzer Ach and the Rhine, the Alps, the snow 
mountains of Appeuzel and Glarus, with mountains 
covered with pine forests in the foreground, conveys 
a very faint idea of the beauty before our eyes. In 
the visitors' book in the tower were some German 
rhymes, which, roughly translated, go somewhat in 
this way : — 

"Charming prospect, best of wine, 

Be joyful, then, heart of mine; 

Farewell, thou lovely Gebhard's hill, 

Thou Bodensee, so fair, so still." 

And more still about wine, for this is not the land 
of the Woman's Crusade, it appears : — 

" It makes you glad to drink good wine, 
And praying makes life more divine. 
If you would be both good and gay, 
Piay well and drink well every day." 

Some one remarks, — 

" What below was far from clear, 
Is no less dark when we stand here." 



LINDAU AND BREGENZ. 103 

And a very enthusiastic person writes, — 

" Here flies from us sorrow, here vanishes pain, 
Here bloom in our hearts joy and freshness again. 
Who can assure us, and how can we know, 
That heaven is fairer than this scene below ? " 

In pages of such doggerel one finds comical 
enough things ; but exported, they may lose their 
native flavor, so I will not give too many of them. 

By making rather a long excursion from here 
you can visit the birthplace of Angelica Kauff- 
man. We did n't go, but we felt very proud to 
think we could if we wished, having lately read 
" Miss Angel." 

There is a place in this neighborhood the name 
of which I refuse to divulge, because, if I should 
tell it and disclose its attractions, the next steamer 
from America would certainly bring over too many 
people to occupy it, and so ruin it. I shall keep it 
for myself. But I will describe it, and awaken as 
much longing and unrest and dissatisfaction with 
American prices as I can. It is n't exactly a vil- 
lage, but it is near a village. It has shady lanes 
that wind about between hedges ; houses that are 
placed as if with the express purpose of talking 
with one another, — only three or four houses, w 7 ith 
superb old trees hanging over them. There is 
the nicest, brightest of Fraus, — who owuis this 
bit of land, the houses and the hedges and trees 
close by the water's edge, a boat, a bath-house, and 
a great dog, — a happy, prosperous widow, with a 
daughter to help in household matters, and to go 
briskly to market to the neighboring town. So 
happy is she, one thinks involuntarily her Mann 



104 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

was perhaps aggressive, and that to be free from 
his presence may be to her a blessing from 
Heaven. She lives in a house where the ceiling is 
so low one must stoop going through the doors. 
The windows and doors are all open. The. tables 
and chairs are scoured snowy white. She brings 
you milk in tall glasses, — it is cream, pure and 
simple. And then she takes you into the house 
close by, with great airy chambers, and broad low 
casements, under which the water ripples softly, 
and she tells you, without apparently knowing 
herself, one of the wonders of the age, — that she 
will rent her four rooms in this detached house 
for forty guldens a month, and serve four persons 
from her own dwelling with fruit, meat, cream, 
the best the land affords ; and forty guldens are 
about twenty dollars, gold. (This must not mis- 
lead the unwary. There are places enough here 
where you can spend quite as much as you do 
at home.) We did not quite faint, but we were 
very deeply moved. We did not even tell the 
good woman that her terms were not exorbitant, 
crafty, wwldly creatures that we were. Here 
was one spot unspoiled by the madding crowd. 
We w r ere not the ones to bring pomps, and vani- 
ties, and high prices to it. So we choked down 
our amazement, and hypocritically remarked it 
w r as all very pleasant, and we thought perhaps 
we might return. Return ! Of course we shall re- 
turn ! When all things else fail, and ducats are 
painfully few, then will we flee to this friendly 
abode, and live in a big room on the lovely lake, 
so near, indeed, that we can almost fish from our 



LINDA U AND BREGENZ. 105 

windows ; have a boat to row, a bath-house at our 
service ; quarts, gallons of cream ; and the Swiss 
mountains before our eyes morning, noon, and 
night ; and all for five dollars a month. I am tell- 
ing the truth, but I do not expect to be believed. 1 
am tempted to write its name, — its pretty, friendly, 
suggestive little name, — but I will not. It ends 
in LE, it sounds like a caress, so much will I say ; 
perhaps so much is indiscreet. Don't waste your 
time looking for it. You will never find it. We 
only happened to drift there. It really is not 
worth your while to search for it. It is quite se- 
cluded, quite out of the way, a sleepy-hollow that 
I am sure you would find dull. 

There are many green, sweet nooks, many pretty 
villages, many cleanly little cottages, many smil- 
ing, broad-browed, clear-eyed women, on the shores 
of the Lake of Constance ; but our woman, our 
cottage, our cream, our mountains, our treasure, 
you- will never, never find. 





■M0SM 



THE VORARLBERG. 




FEEL a deep and ever-increasing sym- 
pathy with explorers of strange lands 
whose narratives a harsh world pro- 
nounces exaggerations. What if they 
do say that the unknown animal which darts across 
their path has five heads and seventeen legs'? 
There is a glamour over everything in an utterly 
new place, — the very atmosphere is deceptive. 
After a while, things assume their natural propor- 
tions, but at first it seems as if one really did see 
with one's own eyes all these redundant members. 
Even here in the beaten track of travel, writing as 
honestly as possible from my own point of view, I 
feel like begging my friends to put no faith in any- 
thing I say. The mountains in themselves are 
intoxicating enough to turn one's head ; but then 
of course much depends upon the kind of head one 
possesses. Recently, at sunset by a lake, we were 
looking over the water at a mountain view, — soft, 
wooded slopes near us, huge rocky masses be- 
yond, height upon height rising in hazy blue, 
the snowy summits just touched by the Alpine 
glow, — when some strangers approached. Berlin 
has the honor of being their dwelling-place, we 
ascertained afterwards. 



THE VORARLBERG. 107 

" Lieber Mann," said the lady, "just look at all 
that snow ! " 

" Snow ! " replied the lieber Mann, " snow in 
summer ! But that is impossible ! " 

" I think it must be snow," said the wife, doubt- 
fully. Then, " But only see the beautiful moun- 
tains." 

" Hm, hm," remarks the lieber Mann, regard- 
ing them superciliously through his eye-glass ; " I 
can't say that they are particularly well-formed ! " 
Here, at least, is a head that is secure ; no jocund 
day on the misty mountain-tops, no broad, mag- 
nificent ranges at high noon, and no twilight with 
" mountains in shadow, forests asleep," have power 
to move that astute Kopf a fraction of an inch. 
" They have better mountains in Berlin," remarked 
a German friend in an undertone. 

Bludenz is a little town in the Vorarlberg, which 
means, you know, — or you don't know, — the 
country lying before the Adler or Arlberg, and the 
Arlberg is the watershed between the Rhine and 
Danube, and the boundary between the Vorarlberg 
and the Tyrol. This sounds guide-bookish, — and 
very naturally, as I have copied it word for word 
from Baedegker, — but one must say something of 
praiseworthy solidity once in a while. Bludenz is 
a railway terminus, which fact may not interest 
the world at large, but it did us hugely. We re- 
joiced in the thought of the great post-wagon, the 
cracking of whips and blowing of horns, and long, 
delightful, breezy rides over the hills and far away. 
Our after-experience of this lively whip-cracking 
and horn-blowing has led us to the conclusion that 



208 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

it is decidedly at its best in the opera, where the 
Postilion of Lonjoumeau sings his pretty song and 
cracks his whip for a gay refrain ; and that it is all 
very well, when you yourself are going off early in 
the morning amid the prodigious noise and the ex- 
citement of stowing away passengers and packages, 
while a crowd of village loafers stand gazing and 
gaping at you, — in short, when you are " in it," 
you know ; but when it is only other people who 
are going, only they for whom all the noise is 
made and you are roused from your gentle slum- 
bers at half past four perhaps, you do not regard 
the postilion and his accomplishments w 7 ith un- 
qualified admiration. 

You wish you had gone to the " Eagle," or the 
"Ox," or the "Lamb," or the "Swan," or the 
" Lion," or to any other beast or bird, rather than 
to the "Post," where the "Post" omnibus and its 
relations make your mornings miserable. These 
are always the names of the inns in these little 
towns. There is usually a "Crown" too, and 
often an " Iron Cross." But people with nerves 
must n't go to the " Post." Our party left its 
nerves in the city before starting off on a rough 
tour, yet even we have suffered at various inns 
which bear the names of " Post," but which should 
properly be called " Pandemonium." 

Our first postilion wwe the regulation long- 
boots, a postilion hat, and silver pansies in his 
ears. He cracked his whip nobly, — as well as we 
have heard Sontheim in the theatre at Stuttgart, 
and that is no faint praise. He was the jolliest of 
men, on the best of terms with all the dwellers 



THE VORARLBERG. 1Q9 

among the mountains. He stopped at every inn 
and house where a glass of wine was to be had, 
and I think I may say invariably drank it. All 
the goodwives joked with him and smiled at him ; 
all the men had a friendly word for him, and all 
the peasant-girls who had lovers in distant vil- 
lages were continually stopping our great ark to 
send packages, letters, or messages to the absent 
swain. He seemed to be for the whole region a 
friend, patron, and adviser, a tutelary deity in fact, 
and grand receptacle for confidences. He had' a 
shrewd, kind face, large clear eyes, and had driven 
among these mountains twenty-six years. It really 
did not seem a bad way of spending one's days, 
always going over the mountain-passes, knowing 
everybody and loved by everybody in the country 
round. I admired him extremely, and felt very 
much elated at the honor of sitting up on the box 
with so important a personage. 

He told us a story of an Englishman who was 
inquiring how much it would cost to be driven to 
a certain point. 

The driver replied so many gulden. 

''Impossible," said the Englishman; "Bae- 
deflker says half as many." 

" I '11 tell you what," answered the postilion ; 
"let Baede#ker take you, then." 

Having laughed at the poor stranger, it is only 
fair that we now laugh at the natives. 

" I spiks English," an innkeeper said to me. 
" Em joli hearse," he remarked further, to my 
great bewilderment, until it gradually dawned 
upon me that this was English for "a pretty 



HQ ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

horse." There is a house in this region whose 
proprietor wished to receive English lodgers, and 
signified his desire to the world by hanging out 
this sign : " English boards here." 

After all, there are no more ludicrous verbal 
blunders in the world than we English-speaking 
people continually make during our first year's 
struggles with this mighty German tongue ; and 
nowhere do a foreigner's queer idioms and laugh- 
able choice of words meet with more kindness, 
charity, courtesy, and helpfulness than in Ger- 
many. It is astonishing how kind the Germans 
in general are in this respect. It is all very well 
to say politeness demands such kindness ; but 
where things sound so irresistibly droll, I think 
sometimes we might shriek with laughter where 
the Germans kindly correct, and do not even 
smile. 

But w r e are neglecting Bludenz, for which little 
town we mean to say a friendly word. It is 
usually considered only a stepping-stone to some- 
thing higher and better, but we liked it. The 
mountains rise on both sides of the village and 
its one long road, where we walked at sunset, 
crossing the bridge which spans the foaming, 
tumbling, rushing 111. Beyond the ravine of 
the Brandnerthal, the Scesaplana, the highest 
mountain of the Raeticon range, rises from fields 
of snow. We strolled along, breathing the sweet, 
pnre air, meeting groups of peasant-girls, all of 
whom carried their shoes in their hands. It 
was a fete day, and they had been to vespers, put- 
ting their shoes on at the church door and remov- 



THE VORARLBERG. \\\ 

ing them when they came out. This most prac- 
tical and admirable method of saving shoe-leather, 
I venture to recommend to the fathers of large 
families. It must be superior to "copper-toes." 
When we came back to take our supper in a gar- 
den, somebody was playing Strauss waltzes, with a 
touch so loving, spirited, and magnetic, it seemed 
as if the mountans themselves must whirl off pres- 
ently in response. In this land a garden where 
people drink beer and wine, eat, smoke, rest, think, 
enjoy, all in the open air, is sometimes made up 
of most delightful surroundings ; but on the other 
hand it sometimes means two emaciated, dyspeptic 
trees, a gravel floor, and half a dozen wooden 
tables with wretchedly uncomfortable chairs. But 
if it is an enclosure in the open air with one table 
large enough to hold a beer-mug, it is still a 
garden. 

Our Bludenz garden was pleasant enough, how- 
ever, and we sat there till the mountains sank 
deeper and deeper into the gloom ; and the Mad- 
cheri who waited upon us told us about her native 
village, where her brother was schoolmaster ; our 
landlady came, too, and talked with us, quietly, 
and somewhat with the manner of a hostess enter- 
taining guests. It was all very pretty and simple 
and kindly, and seemed the most natural thing 
in the world, as it happened. The people here 
had intelligent faces, clear eyes like children, and 
pleasant, courteous ways. The trouble about all 
these little places is, we don't like to leave them. 
It seems as if the new place could not be so 
pretty, the new people so kindly and simple and 



112 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

honest, and we go about weakly, leaving fragments 
of our hearts everywhere. 

Then the mountain tramps we had, climbing 
high for a view, and then glorying in it ! A little 
maid was once our guide, who chattered to us 
prettily all the way, and told us the chief events 
of her life, — how her father and mother were 
dead, and her uncle beat her, and made her work 
too hard ; how there was a great, great, great bird 
who sat up on the barren cliffs so high that never 
a Jciger could climb near enough to shoot him ; how 
he had eyes as big as a cow's, and when he sat on 
the right cliff the weather was always fair, but 
when he sat on the left there was storm among 
the mountains. This must be true, for we saw the 
cliffs. Then she solemnly assured us, if we would 
go early to the chapel in a neighboring village the 
following morning, we could get absolution for all 
our sins, because, as it appeared, the priest there 
was going far away, as missionary to America, and 
in farewell was washing the souls of his flock with 
extra thoroughness. We told the child it was very 
fortunate the good priest was going to America. 
From what we had heard of that ungodly land, we 
thought it must be in sad need of missionary 
work. 

The scenery from Bludenz to Landeck is a series 
of picturesque, varied views. The road ascends 
with many windings to the pass of the Arlberg, 
when you are at last in the Tyrol ; and the green, 
richly wooded mountains, the jagged, rocky ones, 
the lofty peaks where the snow gleams, together 
with the pure, invigorating air, and the swing of 



THE VORARLBERG. H3 

our mountain chariot with its five horses, — which, 
if not very rapid, were at least strong and fresh, — 
made altogether a thoroughly enjoyable expe- 
rience. 

On the Arlberg we gathered our first Alpine 
roses. They are not so very pretty, except as they 
grow often in masses so luxuriant as to give a rosy 
effect to a broad slope. That is, they are pretty, 
but their graceful cups droop so quickly when you 
take them from their native air and native heights, 
that they are disappointing. 

At St. Christoph, which is almost at the top of 
the Arlberg, we stopped long enough to refresh 
ourselves with a glass of Tiroler wine, and were 
taken into a little chapel behind the inn to see a 
wooden statue of St. Christopher, who seems to be 
held in peculiar veneration in this region, being 
painted or carved in many churches and even on 
the walls of houses. This was a great crea- 
ture of eight or nine feet, standing in the corner 
of the chapel, with glaring, beady eyes, glossy 
black painted hair, and a huge staff, to represent 
the pine-tree of the sweet old legend, in his hand ; 
while on his shoulder was perched the child Jesus, 
with a face like a small doll. He was as funny 
and grotesque a saint as the world can boast, yet 
our hearts went strongly out to him when we 
learned what a very little peasant-boy it was who 
had made him with his pocket-knife out of a block 
of wood, and particularly when we observed his 
saintship's legs, never too symmetrical, but now 
hacked and chipped into utter deformity, and were 
told the reason. Every child in this neighborhood 



214 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

who must leave his mountain home takes a bit of 
St. Christopher with him as a talisman against 
homesickness. Poor little souls ! Imagine them 
coming to say, " Lebewohl zu detn heiligen Chris- 
toph," and tearfully hacking away in the region of 
his patellas and tibias and fibulas, because long 
ago they have removed the exterior of his stal- 
wart members, and he will soon be dangerously 
undermined. His shoulders are sufficiently devel- 
oped to bear considerable cutting down without 
perceptibly diminishing them ; but I presume the 
little ones attack the region which they can most 
conveniently reach. 

Lovely air and lovely hills ! No wonder the 
children fear Heimweh will come to their hearts 
when they can no longer see the little village 
houses all huddled together round the church with 
the tall spire, while the green hills rise on every 
side, and the morning mists roll from them, and 
the evening glow warms and glorifies their cold, 
white summits, and the impetuous mountain tor- 
rent goes foaming by. 

We felt premonitory symptoms of homesickness 
ourselves for those fair and noble heights, and we 
wanted very much to beg for a bit of St. Christo- 
pher's knee-pan. But they would not have given 
us an atom of the dear old, hideous, overgrown 
giant-saint, worthless heretics that we are. 




IN THE TYROL. 




FTEY said Landeck would not please us, 
but it did. They said it was not pretty, 
but it was. They said we would not stay 
there, but that is all they knew about it 
or us. In itself, so far as its houses are concerned, 
it is not attractive, it is true ; but it lies in a very 
picturesque way on both banks of the Inn, which 
rushes and roars constantly at this point, and the 
hills around are bold and beautiful. It has its 
ancient castle, on the heights directly above the 
town; but the castle now is a failure, whatever 
proud tales its walls might tell us could they 
speak, — a failure even as a "ruin," I mean. It 
is not very high, but the path is steep ; and when 
you get to the top you wish you had remained 
below, for there is nothing to reward you. The 
view is no finer than you can have from almost 
any point here ; and the castle is simply nothing to 
see, being only a few gray walls without form or 
comeliness, in the shade of which, the day we vis- 
ited it, sat a few poor old women, who now occupy 
it, with snails and bats and wind and storm, rent 
free. 



116 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

To Zams, the next village, you walk along the 
river road past fields of grain, where cornflowers 
and poppies are gayly growing, and the water 
hurrying from the mountains sings its loud, bold 
song, and everywhere around are the varied hues 
and heights of the Tyrolean Alps. At Zams 
there is a beautiful waterfall, which you must seek 
if you would see, for it hides itself from the world. 
Over a bridge, along the river road, then through 
lanes where there were more of the pretty corn- 
flowers and gay poppies, past a group of cottages, 
a mill, a noisy brook, a mass of rugged cliffs, we 
strolled, the voice of the falling water calling us 
ever nearer and nearer, until suddenly at the 
last it was before us. The rocks conceal it on 
every side up to the last moment when you are 
directly at the foot of it, — one of the fine dramatic 
effects in which Mother Nature likes sometimes to 
indulge. 

It falls with great force a hundred and fifty feet, 
perhaps, — this is a wild feminine guess, yet some- 
where near the truth, I hope, — in a narrow, im- 
mensely swift stream, which, as it issues from the 
rock, runs a little diagonally. It has forced a 
passage through the rock, and wdien we saw it was 
sweeping through this aperture ; but in stormy 
weather it hurls itself over the summit of the 
ledge, increasing its height many feet, and is mag- 
nificent in its fury. An experienced mountain- 
climber told us that there are a succession of these 
falls, of which this is the seventh and last, and the 
only one that can be seen without painful and dan- 
gerous climbing, they are so singularly concealed. 



IN THE TYROL. \\*j 

The stream springs from the glaciers far away, and 
leaps from rock to rock in wild, unseen beauty. It 
seemed to speak to us of the lonely, frozen heights 
and solitude of its birthplace. 

From Landeck to Innsbruck the scenery, taken 
all in all, though pleasing, is less bold and more 
monotonous than are many other parts of the 
Tyrol. There are many historical points of inter- 
est here, and reminders of the bravery of the 
mountaineers in different wars. You see where 
they stood high on their native hills hurling down 
trunks of trees and huge masses of rock on the 
invading Bavarians ; and what this work of de- 
struction failed to do, the sure aim of the Tyrolese 
riflemen effectually accomplished. 

In one village they exhibit the room where 
Frederic Augustus, king of Saxony, died suddenly 
from the kick of a horse. Having no inordinate 
interest in his deceased majesty, we were quite 
content to gaze placidly at the outside of the 
house from the post-wagon, as we informed the 
man who tried to induce us to march in, pay our 
fees, and so increase the revenues of the inn. He 
was deeply disgusted, and evidently considered us 
persons of inferior taste. 

You are shown, off at the right of the road on 
a wooded height, the ruins of Schloss Petersburg, 
the birthplace of Margaret, daughter of the count 
of the Tyrol through whom Tyrol came into the 
possession of the emperors of Austria. 

We have seen so many little villages more or 
less alike, all having saints painted on their houses 
in brilliant hues, and mottoes over their doorways, 



llg ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

— some religions, some quite secular and merry, 
and all, too, having names of one syllable, com- 
posed chiefly of consonants, such as Imst, Silz, 
Zams, Mils, Telfs, Zirl, — we cannot hope to re- 
member them with that clearness which character- 
izes the well-regulated mind on its travels. (No 
one in our party has a well-regulated mind.) But 
we have a way among ourselves of designating 
places, which is quite satisfactory and intelligible 
to us. For instance, we say, " That was where we 
drank the cream"; "That was where the inn- 
keeper was a barrel, with head and feet pro- 
truding " ; " That was where that interesting body, 
the fire department, were feasting at long tables 
and singing Tyrolean songs " ; " The village where 
we met the procession, old men and maidens, 
young men and children, singing, chanting, telling 
their beads, bearing candles, and, most of all, 
staring at the strangers." — And what were the 
strangers doing 1 Staring at the people, to be 
sure. We always stare. We are here for that 
purpose. — " The village where the girl put a 
flower in her sweetheart's hat." And how pretty 
it was ! The post-wagon had hardly stopped before 
a good-looking youth dashed down from its top, 
and at the same instant a rosy waiter-girl dashed 
out from the inn, bearing a tall mug of foaming 
beer. She had eyes but for him. He had eyes 
but for her — and the beer. Entranced they met ! 
They stood a little apart from us by a garden, and 
beamed and smiled at each other and whispered 
their secrets, and did n't care a straw whether we 
stupid "other people" saw them or not. They 



IN THE TYROL. H9 

had but a few moments of bliss, for the boy 
had to go on with the post ; but while he was 
drinking the very last of that reviving fluid, she 
took his hat from his head, and, stooping to the 
flowers beside her, chose a great flaming carnation 
pink, which she fastened in his hat-band. He 
looked pleased, which of course made her look 
pleased ; but what a wise little village-Hebe it 
was to give him the beer first ! What would he 
have cared for the flower when his throat was 
dusty and thirsty ! It is such a pity some women 
always persist in offering their flowers and graces 
too soon, — forgetting the nature of the creature 
they adore. 

In an inn at one village was a table which we 
coveted strongly. It was, they said, a hundred 
and fifty years old, octagonal, four or five feet in 
diameter, made of inlaid woods in the natural 
colors, now darkened with age. Broad, solid, firm, 
it looked as if it might last a hundred and fifty 
years longer and then retain its vigor of consti- 
tution. It had a wise, knowing air, as of having 
seen a great deal of the world ; and the landlord 
told us tales of drinking and fighting and scenes 
of rough soldier-life, which were enough to make 
it tremble for its existence. Bavarian soldiers 
once, when they were occupying the village, used 
it rather roughly, and left as many sword-cuts and 
dents in it as they could make in its brave, firm 
wood. Its centre was a slate or blackboard, on 
which beer accounts are conveniently reckoned. 

Just beyond Zirl, the Martinswand rises sixteen 
hundred feet perpendicularly above the road. It 



120 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

has its story, to which everybody who comes here 
must listen. 

The Emperor Maximilian, in 1493, was chasing 
a chamois above the Martinswand, and, having lost 
his way, made a misstep, fell down to the edge of 
a precipice, and hung there, unable to recover his 
footing. The priest of Zirl came with some of 
his people, and, it being impossible to reach him, 
stood at the bottom of the cliff, elevated the host, 
granting him absolution, and then, in horror, 
awaited the end. But " an angel in the garb of a 
chamois-hunter " appeared at this crisis, and bore 
the exhausted monarch to a place of safety. The 
perilous spot, nine hundred feet above the river, is 
now marked by a cross, and the paten used by the 
priest is a blessed relic in a church. 

The story seems to be quite generally believed 
in this neighborhood. We sceptical strangers do 
not find it so enormous a morsel to swallow as is 
sometimes presented to us. I presume if any of 
us w r ere dangling between heaven and earth, with 
the immediate prospect of falling nine hundred 
feet, we would be very apt to call whatever should 
rescue us an "ana-el." 




INNSBRUCK. 




NNSBRUCK impressed us, at first, as 
being far too citified for us to delight in. 
Entering its streets about sunset, the 
time when we have of late been accus- 
tomed to see the cows come home in great herds 
from the mountain pastures, we, our bags and 
shawl-straps, were deposited upon the sidewalk ; 
for when the post stops, you stop without cere- 
mony, and are never taken to the particular hotel 
where you wish to go. We stared blankly at the 
broad streets and ruefully at one another. Our 
eyes, instead of seeing lowing herds, fell upon gal- 
lant young officers in brilliant uniforms. We be- 
came painfully aware of certain defects in our 
personal appearance, of which we had been beauti- 
fully unconscious in the rural mountain districts. 
We observed for the first time that there were 
chasms in our gloves, indented peaks in our hats, 
alluvial deposits on our gowns ; while our boots 
suggested dangerous ravines, bridged across by 
one button, instead of boasting that goodly, de- 
corous row without which no civilized woman 
can be truly respectable. We revenged ourselves 



122 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

by calling Innsbruck " tame," and declaring that 
we would at once flee to our mountain. But it 
is surprising how quickly we have become accus- 
tomed to the luxuries of life in an excellent hotel, 
how bravely we bear the infliction of well-cooked 
dinners, with what fortitude we recline in luxuri- 
ous chairs, and allow well-trained servants to wait 
upon us. Already we have remained longer than 
we intended, there is so much here that interests 
us ; but soon we start off again to commune with 
Nature and get sunburned. 

Then, the truth is, Innsbruck, which looked so 
enormous, so grand, to our eyes, used as they were 
to Tyrolean villages, — we know now how the 
typical country cousin feels when he comes " to 
town " for the first time, — is only a little place 
most charmingly situated on the Inn, in a great 
broad valley, with mountains ten thousand feet 
high on one side, and on the other heights that look 
almost as bold. It has, including its large garrison, 
eighteen or twenty thousand inhabitants, and with 
its pleasant atmosphere, extended views, charming 
mountain excursions, peasants in a variety of cos- 
tumes, soldiers in a variety of uniforms, excellent 
music, and many things of historical interest to 
see, is a very enjoyable place. 

The Museum is thoroughly interesting ; a visit 
to Schloss Amras, where Archduke Ferdinand II. 
and his wife Philippina Welser used to live, is an 
inevitable but agreeable excursion ; you are shown 
buildings erected by celebrated personages, — 
among them a "golden roof" over a balcony of 
a palace which Count Frederic of the Tyrol built 



INNSBRUCK. 123 

to prove that he did not deserve the nickname, 
" with the empty pockets." But the chief thing 
to see, the glory of Innsbruck, is the Maximilian 
monument in the Franciscan church. Maximilian, 
in bronze, kneels on a marble pedestal in the centre 
of the nave, and eight-and-twenty great bronze 
figures of kings and queens and heroes surround 
him. Some are stately and grand ; some — dare 
I say 1 — are comical. The feet of these mailed 
heroes are so broad and big and their ankles so 
attenuated, you are reminded of the marine armor 
worn by divers ; and the waists of the women, in 
the heavy folds of ancient times, are so enormously 
dumpy and their heads so curious, you smile in 
their august faces, though the whole effect of all 
these dark, still figures in the dim church is im- 
posing in the extreme. 

They are all celebrated people, whose histories 
we know ; or, if we do not, we ought to. There is 
Clovis of France, who looks very important indeed, 
and Philip of Spain. There is Johanna, Philip's 
queen ; Cunigunde, sister of Maximilian ; Eleanora 
of Portugal, his mother ; and there are many more 
" dear, dead women," with stately, beautiful names, 
and they themselves, no doubt, were stately and 
beautiful too, but they are not handed down to 
posterity in a very flattering guise. There is God- 
frey de Bouillon, " king of Jerusalem," with a crown 
of thorns on his head. But the two that are really 
lovely to see are Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, 
and Arthur of England. Susceptible, romantic 
girls of eighteen should not be allowed to gaze too 
long at these ideal young men. It will make them 



124: ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

discontented with the realities of life, and they will 
spend their days dreaming of knightly figures in 
bronze. 

Theodoric is considered the finest as a work of 
art. So says all established authority ; but to me 
Arthur is hardly less interesting. Perhaps, in 
some absurd way, it gratified us of Anglo-Saxon 
blood to see, in the midst of these Rudolphs and 
Sigismunds, these counts of Hapsburg and dukes 
of Burgundy, a hero who seemed to belong to us ; 
but, whatever was the cause, the blameless king 
won our loving admiration. 

Theodoric is the more graceful. He stands in 
an easy, leaning attitude. He is lost in thought. 
He is in full armor, but he may lie dreaming 
of something far removed from war. Arthur is 
firm and proud and strong, looking every inch 
a king and a true knight. Both are knightly. 
Both are kingly. Their figures are slight and 
strong, and they stand like young heroes amid 
these mighty old potentates, some of whom look 
as if gout might have been a greater source of 
trouble to them than their enemies. 

If your affections are divided, as were ours, be- 
tween the two, the best thing to do, perhaps, is to 
repair immediately to the store where the wood- 
carving and Tyrol souvenirs make you feel quite 
miserable, — you want so much' more than you can 
possibly have, — and carefully select a Theodoric 
and an Arthur from the many representations of 
them, in wood of different colors and in various 
sizes, that you will there see. If you march off 
with them, you will feel sublime enough not to be 



INNSBRUCK. 125 

beguiled into yielding to the temptation of the 
paper-knives and boxes and innumerable fascinating 
knick-knacks made by the Tyrolean wood-carvers. 
But do have them well packed, for it is very sad 
to see Arthur without his visor and Theodoric 
with several fractured fingers. 

On the sarcophagus, below the kneeling Max- 
imilian, are marble reliefs representing the chief 
events in the emperor's life. Thorwaldsen pro- 
nounced the first nineteen the most perfect work 
of its kind in the world. These are by Colin, 
and the others, — there are twenty-four in all, — 
by Bernhard and Albert Abel, are less remarkable 
in their perspective, and far less clear. Colin's 
are very interesting to study carefully. In battle 
scenes, in grand wedding feasts, with hundreds of 
spectators, in triumphant entries into conquered 
cities, every face, every weapon, every feature, and 
all the most minute details are executed with 
wonderful clearness. 

Three or four of the oldest women in the world 
were saying their prayers in the church as we 
wandered about, or sat quietly looking at these 
men and women of the past, while queer snatches 
of history, poetry, and romance came and went 
confusedly in our minds. 

You see here, too, a little "Silver Chapel," so 
called from a silver statue of the Virgin over the 
altar. The tomb of the Archduke Ferdinand II., 
by Colin, is here, and that of Philippina Welser ; 
and near the entrance, in the main church, is a 
fine statue, in Tyrolese marble, of Andreas Hofer, 
and memorial tablets in honor of all the Tyrolese 
who have died for their country since 1796. 



126 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

We have been refreshing our memories in re- 
gard to Andreas Hofer, and are extremely inter- 
ested in his career; but, having just suffered a 
grievous disappointment with which he is con- 
nected, we are going to try to banish every thought 
of him from our minds. A play representing his 
whole life was to have been enacted to-day in a 
neighboring village ; but to-day it rains, and as the 
village histrionic talent was going to display itself 
in the open air, "Andreas Hofer" is postponed till 
to-morrow, when, unfortunately, we shall be riding 
over hill and dale in a post-wagon. We have tried 
to prevail upon the post-wagon powers to allow us 
to wait a da}\ but they are obdurate. We can 
wait if we care to pay our passage twice, not 
otherwise. This cross may be well for a party that 
usually sails along on the full tide of prosperity, 
having always the rooms it wants, front seats in 
post-wagons, the gocd-will of drivers and guides, and 
that has n't lost or broken anything since it started. 

It is possible that we are too successful and 
need this discipline. But only think what we 
lose ! — a village drama in the open air, given by 
village amateurs in the patois of the district. Ac- 
cording to the announcement, the tailor — the 
Herr Schneider — was to be director-in-chief; and 
the audience would audibly express its praise and 
blame, while the actors would have the liberty of 
retiring. This, added to heroics in dialect, cer- 
tainly promised an entertaining scene. The cos- 
tumes, too, were to be like those worn in Andreas 
Hofer's time, and the tailor's daughter was to be 
leading lady. Was, do I say ? Is — is yet to 
be, but not for us, alas ! 



HOHENSCHWANGAU AND NEU SCHWAN- 
STEIN. 




T pains me to think that the king of 
Bavaria, or any other fine-looking young 
gentleman, would deliberately scowl at 
an inoffensive party of ladies Avho were, 
one and all, only too pleased to have the oppor- 
tunity of gazing smilingly at him. But the truth 
is, 1)3 did. The way it happened is this. We 
and the king of Bavaria are at present travel- 
ling in the North Tyrol. But he cannot have 
wanted so much as we to go to the South Tyrol, 
which is bolder and grander, or he would have 
gone there, not being bound by petty considera- 
tions of convenience and expense like ordinary 
tourists. At a little inn, "Auf der Ferae," be- 
tween Innsbruck and Reutte, in a place called 
Fernstein, by a lake named Fernsee (and also 
"The Threa Lakes," because the land juts out on 
one side in tw r o long points, making three pretty 
coves where the tranquil water meets the soft 
green shores), the post-wagon halted, that our 
postilion might drink his glass of native wine. 
There were numerous servants in blue-and-sil- 



128 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

ver livery at the door, and we were told King 
Louis was driving in the neighboihood, and that 
we would certainly meet him. While we were 
waiting, the people regaled us with tales of the 
young king's eccentricities. Some of his extrava- 
gant fancies remind one of the Arabian Nights, or 
old fairy-tales, more than of anything in these lat- 
ter days. He usually travels by night, for in- 
stance, and sleeps, the little that he ever sleeps, 
mornings. He drives fast through the darkness, 
servants with torches galloping in advance, stop- 
ping here and there only long enough for a change 
of horses, his own horses and servants being in 
readiness for him at the ditferent inns along the 
route. Often his carriage dashes up to this inn, 
" Auf der Fernc," at twelve o'clock at night, and 
then this deliciously eccentric being is rowed 
across the little Fernsee to a tiny island, where he 
partakes, by the romantic gleam of torches, of a 
feast prepared by French cooks. Rowed back to 
the shore, he starts again with fresh horses and 
goes swiftly on, through the night, to some other 
inn, where the noise of his arrival awakens all the 
sleepers. 

We heard him later ourselves at two in the morn- 
ing at an inn on the road where we were staying, 
and in fact were told by the landlord that he was 
expected ; were shown the sacred apartment set 
apart for his majesty, who now and then sits an 
hour in it at some unearthly time of night, and 
we were advised to peep through our curtains at 
him, his suite, and his horses, torches, etc. ; but 
such was the sleepiness created by a ride of six- 



HOHENSCHWANGAU, ETC. 129 

teen hours in mountain air, that, though we were 
dimly conscious something of interest was happen- 
ing, I do not think we would have been able to 
stir, to see even Solomon in all his glory. This 
was the true reason, but the one that we pretended 
actuated us is quite different. We remark with 
dignity that no young woman of proper spirit will 
condescend to peep through a curtain at a man 
who has scowled at her, king or no king. 

But I must tell you how, when, and where the 
royal scowl took place. We had left the little inn 
by the lake, and were riding along in an expectant 
mood, when there came a great clatter of hoofs, 
and two blue-and-silver men dashed by followed 
by an open carriage, where King Louis sat alone. 
A kind fate ordained that the road should be nar- 
row at this point, with a steep bank on one side, 
over which it would not be pleasant to be precipi- 
tated ; so the royal coachman, as well as our driver, 
moderated the speed of his horses, and we there- 
fore had an admirable opportunity to see this 
" idealisch " young man — as the Germans call him 
— distinctly. The ceremonies performed were few. 
Our postilion took off his hat ; so did the king. 
Then it seemed good in his sight to deliberately 
throw back his head, look full in our amiable, smil- 
ing, interested countenances, and indulge in a 
haughty and an unmistakable scowl. He must 
have slept even less than usual that morning. We 
were not accustomed to have young men scowl at 
us, and really felt quite hurt. If he had looked 
grand and unseeing, had gazed off abstractedly 
upon the mountain-tops, we would have been de- 



130 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

lighted with him. As it is, we cannot honestly say 
that we consider his manner to strangers ingratiat- 
ing. Still, as the melancholy fact is that he hates 
women, his scowl probably meant no especial aver- 
sion to our humble selves, but was merely the 
expression of the immense scorn and disgust he 
feels towards the sex at large. 

In revenge, I hasten to say that, though he cer- 
tainly has a distinguished air, and a fine head, and 
the great eyes that look so dreamy and poetical in 
the photographs of him at eighteen or twent}^, he 
is not nearly so handsome as those early pictures. 
Perhaps he can look dreamy still ; but of this lie 
granted us no opportunity to judge, and he has 
grown stout, and has lost the delicate refinement 
of his youth. 

This road to Reutte is one of the finest of the 
mountain-passes between the Tyrol and Bavaria. 
The deep, wooded ravines, lovely, dark-green lakes, 
and noble heights make the landscape very beauti- 
ful and inspiring. Near Lennos, you see on the 
east great bald limestone precipices, the snowy 
Zugspitze, 9,761 feet high, the Schneefernerkopf, 
9,462 feet, and other peaks of 8,000 feet and more ; 
while you spy picturesque ruins, old hunting-seats, 
and fortresses here and there high on the proud 
cliffs. 

Reutte has large, broad, pretty houses. It is 
said laughingly that there is not a house in the 
place which a king or some other exalted being has 
not selected to die in, or in some way to make 
memorable. 

From this place we have pursued still farther 



IIOIIENSCnWANGAU, ETC. \%1 

our studies of royalty, having met with so much 
encouragement at the outset. We have visited 
the Schloss Hohenschvvangau, where the king of 
Bavaria and his mother, the queen, spend some 
time every summer ; and also Schloss Schwanstein, 
which is yet building, but where the young king 
often stays, unfinished as it is. 

The way to Hohenschwangau leads through a 
charming park. The castle was once a Roman 
fort, they say, then a baronial estate, then almost 
destroyed by the Tyrolese, then bought by King 
Max of Bavaria, who had it remodelled and orna- 
mented with fine frescos by Munich artists. 

In the vestibule is an inscription in gold letters 
on blue, which says something like this : — 

" "Welcome, wanderer, — welcome, fair and gracious women ! 
Leave all care behind ! 
Yield your souls to the sweet influences of poetry.'' 

Is n't that a pretty greeting 1 It 's all very well, 
however, to have such things written on your walls, 
and then to go about the world scowling at people ; 
but it does n't look consistent. From the vesti- 
bule you pass into a long hall, where are two rows 
of columns, old suits of armor standing like men 
on guard on both sides, shields, spears, halberds, 
and cross-bows on the walls, and a little chapel at 
the end. 

The frescos throughout the castle are very in- 
teresting. From the billiard-room, with a pretty 
balcony, you go into the Schwanrittersaal, where 
the pictures on the walls represent the legend of 
the Knight of the Swan, and remind you of the 
opera of " Lohengrin." The painted glass of the 



132 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

doors opening from this room upon a balcony is 
of the seventeenth century. 

There is an Oriental room, with reminiscences 
of King Max's Eastern travels. Here you see 
Smyrna, Troja, the Dardanelles, Constantinople, in 
fresco ; rich presents from the Sultan, a table-cover 
embroidered by the wives of the Sultan, jewelled 
fans, etc. 

There is an Autharis room, with frescos by 
Sch wind, telling the story of the wooing of the Prin- 
cess Theudelinda by the Lombard king, Autharis. 
Do you feel perfectly familiar with the history of 
Autharis and Theudelinda? Because, if you do 
not, I don't really know of any one just at this 
moment who feels competent to give you the 
slightest information upon the subject. 

There is a room of the knights, the frescos 
illustrating mediaeval chivalry, — a Charlemagne 
room. There are, in fact, more rooms than you 
care to read about or I care to describe, and many 
rich objects to see. In the queen's apartments 
was a casket of gold studded with turquoises and 
rubies; elegant toilet-tables rosy with silk linings, 
soft with falling lace; and there is one dear little 
balcony-room, cosy and full of familiar pictures, — 
Raphael's cherubs, a little painting of Edelweiss 
and Alpine roses ; and actually two real spinning- 
wheels : one is the queen's, and the other be- 
longed to a young court lady whose recent death 
was a deep grief to the queen, it is said. 

But the most striking, and in the end fascinat- 
ing, thing in the castle is the number of swans 
you see. It would be difficult to convey any idea 



HOHENSCHWANGAU, ETC. 133 

of the swan-atmosphere of this place. Swans sup- 
port baskets for flowers and vases. There are 
swans in china, in marble, in alabaster, in gold and 
silver, on the tables, on the mantels and brackets, 
painted, embroidered on cushions and footstools, 
— everywhere you find them. A half-dozen of 
different sizes stand together on a small table, 
some of them large, some asftny as the toy swan 
a child sails in his glass preserve-dish for a pond. 
There is a swan-fountain in the garden ; a great 
swan on the stove in a reception-room. 

King Louis can bathe every day in a gold bath- 
tub if he wishes. Our eyes have seen it, though 
the guide said he had never shown it before. I 
have no means of knowing whether the man told 
the truth. There is another and yet more entic- 
ing bath-room hewn out of the solid rock. We 
entered it from the garden. From without, its 
walls look like dark thick glass, through which one 
sees absolutely nothing. From within, the effect 
is enchanting. You see the highest tower of the 
castle on one side rising directly above you, the 
lovely garden with its choice flowers and superb 
trees, the grand mountains beyond, — and all 
bathed in a deep rosy light from the hue of the 
glass. It is an enchanted grotto, and very Arabian 
Nights-ish. A marble nymph stands on each side 
of the bath, which is cut in the centre of the stone 
floor, and one of them turns on a pivot, disclosing 
a concealed niche, into which you step and slowly 
swing round until you are in a subterranean pas- 
sage, from which a mysterious stairway leads to 
the dressing-room above. 



134 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

We went everywhere, even into the king's little 
study, up in the tower, where we were explicitly 
told not to go. It was a simply furnished room, 
with an ordinary writing-table, upon which papers 
and writing-materials were strewn about, and im- 
portant-looking envelopes directed to the king. 
And it commanded a lovely view of mountains, 
broad plains, and four lakes, the Alpsee, Schwan- 
see, Hopfensee, and Bannwaldsee. 

Our little tour of inspection was just in time, 
for at twelve that night, the castle servants told 
us, the king would come dashing up to his own 
door, after which there can be of course no admit- 
tance to visitors. 

Hohenschwangau is most beautifully situated, 
but the Neu Schwanstein is still more striking. It 
is founded upon a rock. You climb to reach it, 
and you can climb far higher on the mountains 
that tower behind it. It stands directly by a deep 
ravine, and the view from it is magnificent. The 
young king here by his owm hearthstone has wild 
and abrupt mountain scenery, — a rocky gorge, 
crossed by a delicate wire bridge, an impetuous 
waterfall ; and looking far, far off from the battle- 
ments he sees villages, many lakes, dense woods, 
winding streams, Hohenschwangau looking proudly 
towards its royal neighbor, and the glorious moun- 
tains circling and guarding the valley. Living 
here, one would feel like a god on high Olympus 
looking down upon humanity toiling on the plains 
below. 

The king likes this place, and it is said wishes 
to remain here when the queen, his mother, comes 



HOHENSCIIWANGAU, ETC. 135 

to Hohenschwangau. But this is an unwarrantable 
intrusion upon their little family differences, which 
they should enjoy unmolested, like you and me. 
Schwanstein in its exterior form and character re- 
sembles a mediaeval castle, and the appointments 
in the servants' wing, the only part of the interior 
as yet finished, are strictly in keeping. There 
are solid oaken benches and tables, carved cases 
and chests, oaken bedsteads as simply made as 
possible, and windows with tiny oval or diamond 
panes. 

The room occupied temporarily by the king is 
very small and simple, — has a plain oak bedstead 
and dressing-table. Across the bed were thrown 
blankets, on which were blue swans and blue lions, 
and in the dining-room adjoining the carpet was 
blue, with golden Bavarian lions, and the all-per- 
vading swans. This was a pretty room, the frescos 
illustrating the story of a life in mediaeval times, 
— ,the life of a warrior from the moment when he 
starts forth from his father's door, a fair-haired boy, 
to seek his fortunes in the great world. Mountain 
scenery, village life, his first service to a knight, 
battle, gallant deeds, receiving knighthood, be- 
tra}rai, imprisonment, escape, victory, — all the 
eventful story until he sits with men old like him- 
self, and over their wine they tell of the doughty 
deeds of the past ; and then, older still, and frail 
and feeble and alone, he leans upon his staff as 
he rests under a tree where careless children play 
around him. 

A charming road, through the woods belonging 
to the Schwanstein park, leads to the castle, past 



136 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

the lovely Alpsee, which looks deep and calm, 
and lies lovingly nestled among the beautiful 
woods that surround it and that rise high above 
it, as if striving to conceal its loveliness from pro- 
fane eyes. 

We saw forty of the royal horses — pretty crea- 
tures they were too — each with the name painted 
over the stall. We were reading them aloud, they 
were so odd and fanciful, when, as one of us said 
Fenella, the little horse that claimed that name 
turned her pretty head and tried to come to us. 
However gently we would call her, she always 
heard and looked at us. Encouraged by this 
gracious condescension on the part of a royal 
animal, we ventured to make friends with her; 
and if ever a horse smiled with good-will and de- 
light it was Fenella when we gave her sugar. 

His majesty's carriages were also shown to us, 
and received our approval. They are plain and 
elegant, but do not differ from high-toned equi- 
pages in general. A narrow little phaeton, low, 
and large enough to hold but one person, we were 
told was a favorite of the king. In it, with a man 
at each side of the horse's head leading him, and 
bearing a torch, the king amuses himself by as- 
cending dangerous mountain-roads at night. They 
say it is astonishing where he will go in this man- 
ner. Fancy meeting that scowling but interesting 
young man, his torches and his funny little vehi- 
cle, on a lonely peak at midnight ! 



LIFE IN SCHATTWALD. 



■ 



jE have been in the Tyrol many days, in 
J villages among the mountains, living in 
| simplicity, content, and charity to all 
mankind. We have believed that our 
condition was as thoroughly rural as anything that 
could possibly be attained by people who only 
want to be rural temporarily as an experiment. 
But our present experience so far transcends all 
that we have known in the past, that the other 
villages seem like bustling, important towns, un- 
pleasantly copying city ways, compared with this 
funny little quiet Schattwald. 

We came here from Reutte in an open carriage, 
passed through a wonderfully beautiful ravine, saw 
the lovely dark-green lakes that delight the soul 
in this part of the world, little hamlets scattered 
about picturesquely among pine-clad hills, bold 
peaks towering to the clouds in the distance, and 
drove slowly through soft, broad meadows, where 
the whole population was out making hay. We 
saw many Tyrolean Maud Miillers in bright gowns 
that looked pretty in the sunshine. A German 
friend told us a certain small object was " an 
American hay-cart, and very practical, like all 



138 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

American inventions." He was so positive in his 
convictions, and, at the same time, so gracious 
towards the inventive genius of America, that we 
saw it would be useless and unwise to pretend to 
know anything about the hay-cart of our native 
heath. But if an American hay-cart should see 
its Tyrolean prototype, it would shatter itself into 
atoms with laughter. 

So in the serene, perfect midsummer weather, 
through this charming country, we came to Schatt- 
wald, the highest village in the Thanheimer Thai. 

I feel now that it is my duty to give a friendly 
caution to people whose nerves are easily shocked, 
and to advise them to drop this letter at this very 
point, for it is shortly going to treat of exceedingly 
realistic and inelegant things. 

We drove to the village inn. There were hens 
and children on the broken stone doorstep, and 
men drinking beer in a little pavilion close by. A 
broad and jocund landlady told us there was ab- 
solutely no place for us. We are, therefore, en- 
sconced in a veritable peasant's cottage over the 
way, going across to the inn when we are hungry, 
which is tolerably often in this mountain air. 

Our rooms are broad and very low, with wide 
casements having tiny panes. A stout wooden 
bench against the wall serves as sofa and chairs. 
A bare wooden table in front of it is graced by a 
great dish filled with Alpine roses, Edelweiss, and 
Wildemanner, which is an appropriate name for 
the little flower with its brown unkempt head and 
shaggy elf-locks blowing in the wind. A six-inch 
looking-glass is hung exactly where the wall joins 



LIFE IN SCHATTWALD. ^39 

the ceiling, and exactly where we cannot possibly 
see ourselves in it without standing on something, 
when we invariably bump our heads. This point- 
edly tells us that vanity is a plant that does not 
nourish in these lofty altitudes. There are cru- 
cifixes on the walls, and extraordinary religious 
pictures ; and in the corner of the front door there 
is a saint somebody made of wood, life-size, with a 
reddish gown, and tinsel stars on a wire encircling 
her head. I think she must be Mary, though it 
did not occur to me at first, she is such a corpu- 
lent young woman, with a thick, short waist, and 
solid feet, which, nevertheless, by their position, 
express the idea that she is floating. An old 
woman often sits by her, knitting, as we go in and 
out. 

" Is it clean 1 " I know some one is asking. That 
depends upon what you call clean ; and when 
travelling one must modify one's opinion about 
cleanliness and order. For a dressing-room it 
would be shockingly unclean ; for peasant life up in 
the Alps it is — if the expression is permissible — ■ 
clean enough. 

The floors are clean, and the bedding and 
towels. The water is pure and fresh, the dishes 
and food perfectly clean. And these, after all, 
are the essentials. But things are very much 
mixed, to say the least ; and the animal kingdom 
lives in close proximity to its superiors. In fact, 
up here it seems to have no superiors. 

You sit in the open air eating a roast chicken, 
with a bit of salad ; and the brother and sister 
chickens, that will some day be sacrificed to the 



140 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

appetite of another traveller, are .running about 
unconscious of their doom at your feet. A little 
colt walks up to you and insists upon putting his 
nose in your plate, — insists, too, upon being 
"petted, — and has n't the least delicacy or compre- 
hension when you tell him you are busy and wish 
lie would go away. He stays calmly, and pres- 
ently a goat or two and a big dog join the group. 
&uch imperturbable good-nature and complacency, 
Buch naivete, I have never before known animals 
to possess. They have been treated since their 
birth with so much consideration, they never im- 
agine that their society may not always be desired. 
In fact, the animals and the people have innocent, 
friendly ways ; and as it never occurs to them you 
can be displeased with anything they may do, the 
result is you never are. And as to the question 
of cleanliness, perhaps the simplest way to settle 
it is to say that there is indeed dirt enough here, 
but it is all, as the children say, " clean dirt," and 
at all events, with glorious air and lovely mountain 
views, brightness and goodness and kindness meet- 
ing you on every side from the peasants, one must 
be very sickly either in body or mind, or in both, 
to be too critical about trifles. 

One whole morning we spent in a Scnnhiitte, — a 
cowherd's hut, — high above the village. (Did I 
not warn you that ungenteel things were coming 1 ) 
And it was one of the most interesting and amus- 
ing half-days we have ever known. There were 
fifty cows there, as carefully tended as if they 
w T ere Arabian horses, and noble specimens of their 
kind of beauty. The prettiest ones were cream- 



LIFE JN SCHATTWALD. \±\ 

colored, with great soft eyes. They expected to 
be talked to and petted like all the other animals 
in Schattvvald. There were different rooms, the 
mountain breezes blowing straight through them 
all, where five or six workmen were making butter 
and enormous cheeses. If we do not know how 
to make superior cheese and butter, it is not the 
fault of our hosts in the Sennhutte, for they left 
nothing unexplained. 

Dare I, or dare I not, tell what should now come 
in a faithful chronicle of that morning? I dare. 
Towards twelve, the chief workman — a man who 
had been devoting himself to our entertainment, 
even sending his little son far out on the hills for 
Alpiue flowers for us — prepared the simple soup 
which serves as dinner for these hard-working men, 
who eat no meat during the entire summer, and 
work nearly eighteen hours a day. We were 
interested in that soup, as in everything that was 
made, done, or said in that novel place. It was 
only cream, and salt, and butter, and flour, but it 
was made by a dark-eyed man with his sleeves 
rolled up and a white cap on his head, and it 
simmered in a kettle large enough to be a witch's 
caldron. 

When quite cooked it was poured into a great 
wooden dish that was almost flat, and each work- 
man drew near with his spoon in his hand. We 
were thinking what a pleasant scene this was 
going to be, and were about to regard it from afar 
like something on the stage, when to our utter 
amazement our friend the soup-maker, as simply, 
as naturally, with as much courtesy and kindness 



242 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

as ever a gentleman at his own table offered deli- 
cate viands to an honored guest* gave me a spoon 
and assigned me my place at the table. 

Dear Mrs. Grundy, what would you have done ] 
I know very well. You would have drawn your- 
self up in a superior way, and you would have 
looked as proper as the mother of the Gracchi, 
and you would have remarked, — 

"Really, my dear Mr. Cowherd-cheese-maker, I 
have been educated according to the separate-plate 
theory." 

But then Mrs. Grundy would never have placed 
herself quite in our position, for she would not 
have been demeaning herself by peering into 
churns and kettles, tasting fresh butter, drinking 
cream from wooden ladles, and asking questions 
about cows, and indeed it is improbable that she 
would have allowed herself to even enter such a 
place ; we will therefore leave Mrs. Grundy com- 
pletely out of the question, — which is alwaj's a 
huge satisfaction, — and tell how we conducted 
ourselves under these unforeseen circumstances. 

With outward calmness, with certain possible 
misgivings and inward shrinkings, we smilingly 
took the seat assigned in the circle of friendly 
young workmen, and dipped our spoon in the 
wooden soup-dish with all the other spoons. That 
we ate, really ate, much, I cannot say. Not only 
was suppressed amusement a hindrance to appe- 
tite, but the five young men with their rolled- 
up sleeves, their fxitois, their five spoons dipping 
together in unison and brotherly love, though in- 
teresting as a picture, with the cows lazily lying 



LIFE IN SCHATTWALD. 243 

in the background, and the Tyrolean Alps seen 
through the open doors and windows, presented 
nevertheless certain obstacles to a thorough enjoy- 
ment of the rustic meal. To taste, according to 
our code, was obligatory ; to eat was impossible. 
We tried to spur on that languid spoon to do its 
duty ; we philosophized about human equality, 
but all in vain ; and we ate not in a proper, true 
spirit, but like a hypocrite, or an actress, so strong 
are these silly prejudices that govern us. 

But the men were quite satisfied, since their 
soup was pronounced excellent ; and, having once 
accepted their hospitality, we had no difficulty in 
excusing ourselves when a second soup — cheese 
being its principal ingredient — was offered us. 
Our one regret in the whole experience was, that 
we could not summon the primest woman of our 
acquaintance to suddenly stand in the doorway 
and gaze in, aghast, upon this convivial scene. 
That, had it been possible, would have been a joy 
forever in our remembrance. 

This Schattwald certainly has great fascinations 
to offer the wanderer who seeks shelter here. 
Rough scrambles for Alpine flowers are followed 
by a long afternoon of novel enjoyment, listening 
to a chorus of hunters singing Tyrolean songs, — 
real hunters, and we never saw their like before 
except on the stage ! The one who played the 
zither was adorned with trophies of the chase, — ■ 
a chamois beard on his dark-green hat, and, on 
his coat, buttons made from stag-antlers. He was 
rather a noble-looking man, with a straightfor- 
ward, kindly expression in his eyes, and he sang 



144 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

the mountain songs with great spirit. They all 
sang with enjoyment, and there seemed to be an 
immense " swing " to the music. The songs ex- 
pressed joy and pride in the freedom of the moun- 
tain life, and alluded in poetical language to their 
mountain maids. In several of them the singers 
gave the " Jodel." which we also heard repeatedly 
echoing among the mountains, and responded to 
from height to height. 

On the prettiest cottage in the place is this in- 
scription in verse. I give the literal transla- 
tion : — 

" I once came into a strange land ; 

On the wall was written, 
' Be pious, and also reserved : 

Let everything alone that is not thiue.' " 

The hunters sang with special delight one song 
which frequently asserted that "Auf der Aim there 
is no sin." This impressed us as a delightful idea, 
though somewhat at variance with the theological 
doctrines in vogue in a less rarefied atmosphere. 
We did not presume to doubt anything they told 
us, however. We are rapidly becoming as credu- 
lous, as simple, as bucolic, as they. But, reclining 
one evening at sunset on a soft slope above the 
village, with the breath of the pines around us, and 
listening, in a lotus-eating mood, to the "drowsy 
tinklings" of the bells of the herds on the oppo- 
site heights, this problem occurred to us : How 
long will it be, at our present rapid rate of assimi- 
lation with things pastoral, and with the slight line 
of demarcation that exists in Schattwald between 
man and bird and beast, before we also contentedly 
eat grass, and go about with bells on our necks 1 



UP THE AIRY MOUNTAIN. 




[LL you walk into my parlor?" said 
every innkeeper from Chur to St. Moritz, 
and our minds were half absorbed in 
contemplation of the scenery and half in 
resisting the allurements of these Swiss spiders, all 
of whom declared with many grimaces and shrugs 
that we could not accomplish the distance between 
the two places in one day. 

" Does not the regular post go through in one 
day 1 " we inquire. " Then why not we by extra 
post?" 

"You are too late, madame." 

" We are not so heavy as the diligence. We 
can go fester." 

"Impossible, madame." 

" Why impossible 1 " 

" Not precisely impossible ; but it would be bet- 
ter, ah, yes, madame, far better, to remain here," 
— with the sweetest of smiles, — " and go on to 
St. Moritz to-morrow." 

They knew this was nonsense. We knew it was 
nonsense. They knew that we knew that it was 
nonsense. We had borne all that it was fitting we 
should bear. 



146 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

"But why?" we sternly demand. 

" You will be more comfortable, madame." 

" We do not wish to be comfortable." 

" You will arrive at midnight." 

" We like to arrive at midnight." 

What then could the spiders do with flies who 
retorted in this unheard-of-way, who resisted ad- 
vice, would telegraph for horses, cheer the postil- 
ions with absurdly frequent Trink Geld, and push 
steadily on to St. Moritz high in the upper Enga- 
dine % 

The truly remarkable feature of the expedition 
was, that when we left Chur in the morning it was 
only with a lazy consciousness that up among the 
mountains somewhere was a St. Moritz, which we 
at some indefinite time would reach. 

Innkeeper No. 1 made us think we would like 
to go through in one day. 

Innkeeper No. 2 strengthened the wish. 

No. 3, by his efforts at discouragement, gave us, 
in place of the wish, a determination to go on. 

No. 4 created in us a frantic resolve to reach 
St. Moritz that night, or perish in the attempt. 

No banner with a strange device did we bear, 
yet as the shades of night were falling fast, and 
we stopped to change horses at a little inn in an 
Alpine village, and queer-looking men with lan- 
terns w r alked about the wild place speaking in an 
unknown tongue (it was Eomanisch, but then we 
did not know), and the road was steep before us, 
we gloried in resembling the immortal "youth " of 
the poem. We always have admired him from the 
time we learned him by heart, and repeated him in 



UP THE AIRY MOUNTAIN. \ATJ 

our first infant sing-song ; but never before did we 
have the remotest idea why his brow was sad, why 
his eye flashed like a falchion from its sheath, 
why he persisted in his eccentric career. Now it 
is clear as light before us. He was goaded on, as 
we were, by the Swiss innkeepers. 

"0, stay!" said they. 

" Excelsior ! " cried we. And on we went, feeling 
that a mighty fate was impelling us, alluding 
grandly to " Sheridan's Ride," " How they brought 
the Good News," and all similar subjects that 
we could remember where people pushed on with 
high resolve, and being in the end grateful to 
the petty souls who had roused our obstinacy, 
ignorant that even the Alps are no obstacle to 
woman's will ; for the latter part of the journey 
was by perfect moonlight, and therefore do we 
bless the innkeepers. Our obstinacy, do I say? 
Let the sneering world use that unpleasant term. 
We will say heroism, for who shall always tell 
where the line between the two is to be drawn 1 ? 

Never shall we forget that wonderful white 
night, the gleams and glooms on the mountains, 
the silver radiance of the lakes, the vast glaciers 
outstretched before us, the mighty peaks towering 
to the skies, the impressive stillness broken only 
by the bells on our horses' necks, the sound of 
their hoofs on the hard road, the rumbling of our 
carriage, and the cracking of the whip. We, with 
our miserable jarring noises, were the only discord- 
ant element, and we well knew we ought to be 
suppressed. It seemed profane to intrude upon 
such grandeur, such majestic stillness. 



148 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

In the full sunlight since, all is quite different ; 
yet we close our eyes, and that glorious white, still 
night comes vividly before us, and always there 
will be to us a glamour about the Engadine on ac- 
count of it. 

The village of St. Moritz lies picturesquely on 
the hillside above a pretty lake of the same name. 
The St. Moritz baths are a mile farther on, where 
numerous hotels and pensions stand on a grassy 
plateau between high mountains, whose sharp 
contour is wonderfully denned in this clear atmos- 
phere against the peculiar deep-blue of the sky. 

In a very interesting article about the Upper 
Engadine in the Fortnightly Review for March, 
the writer speaks with undisguised contempt of 
"the Germanized Kurhaus," "the damp Kurhaus," 
"the huge and hideous Kurhaus," even telling 
people to beware of it. Now, if it were not a 
shockingly audacious thing to dare to have any 
opinion at all in the presence of the Fortnightly 
Review, I would venture most humbly to state 
that I am at present staying at that object of 
British scorn, the Kurhaus, and like it. 

It is ugly. It is immensely long and awkward. 
If your room is in one end and you have a friend 
in the other, you feel, walking through the inter- 
minable corridors, that the introduction of horse- 
cars and carriages would promote economy of time 
and strength. The Kurhaus certainly has its un- 
amiable qualities. It is tyrannical. It puts out 
its lights at ten o'clock " sharp," leaving you in 
Egyptian darkness and not saying so much as " by 
your leave." [I have observed that men, whom I 



UP THE AIRY MOUNTAIN. 149 

have believed to be faultlessly amiable, under these 
circumstances lose their composure and utter im- 
proper ejaculations, as they find themselves, in the 
midst of an interesting game of whist, unable to 
see the color of a card.] But after all, unless 
you are in the village proper, where we — again 
differing from the awful Fortnightly — would not 
prefer to be, it seems to be the best abiding-place, 
because everything centres in it. The people 
from the other hotels must all come here to drink 
the mineral waters and take the baths, to dance 
twice a week if they wish, to hear the music three 
times a day, to attend various entertainments 
given by marvellous prestidigitateurs from Paris 
and singers from Vienna; and though these things 
are very ignoble to talk about when one is among 
the grand mountains, yet there come nights and 
days when it rains in torrents, and when the most 
enthusiastic mountain-climber must condescend 
to be amused or bored under a sheltering roof. 
Then, the Kurhaus, being the largest hotel, the 
place where things of interest most do congregate, 
seems to us the most desirable abode. The Vic- 
toria, which the English frequent, has fresher paint 
and newer carpets and finer rooms. But we are 
true to the Kurhaus, notwithstanding. We are 
grateful to it for a few charming weeks, and in 
some way we don't like to see Albion's proud foot 
crushing it. 

It is " Germanized." That is enough, to be 
sure, in the opinion of many English and Ameri- 
cans, to condemn it ; they often like a hotel ex- 
clusively for themselves, and dislike the foreign 



150 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

element even in a foreign land. But to many of 
us it is infinitely more amusing to live in exactly 
such a place, where we meet Italians and Span- 
iards, French, Germans, Swiss, Dutch, Russians, 
people from South America and islands in the far 
seas, — in fact, from every land and nation, — than 
to establish a little English or American corner 
somewhere, wrap ourselves in our national preju- 
dices, and neither for love nor money abandon one 
or the other. 

To the Paracelsus Spring at the Kurhaus come 
all the people every morning to drink the mineral 
water, and walk up and down while the band 
plays in the pavilion, but very few have an invalid 
air. Some drink because the water is pi-escribed 
by their physicans ; some, because it is the fashion ; 
some, because it is not unpleasant, and drinking 
gives them an opportunity to inspect the other 
drinkers. The mighty names written over the 
glasses fill us with amazement. You may be plain 
Miss Smith from Jonesville, U. S. A., and beside 
your humble name is written that of the Countess 
Alfieri di Sostegno, and the name of a marquis, and 
even that of a princess ; but when they all come to 
the spring and glance at you over their glasses, just 
as you glance at them over yours, and you see 
them face to face, you don't much care if you are 
only Miss Smith. It is astonishing what an ordi- 
nary appearance people often have whose great- 
great-grandfathers were doges of Venice. 

It seems positive stupidity here not to speak at 
least five languages fluently. To hear small chil- 
dren talkiug with ease in a variety of tongues is 



UP THE AIRY MOUNTAIN. \^l 

something that, after the first astonishment, can be 
borne ; but it never ceases to be exasperating and 
humiliating when common servants pass without 
the least difficulty from one language to another 
and another. Yet we Americans should perhaps 
have patience with ourselves in this respect, and 
remember that the ability to speak half a dozen 
languages well, which at first seems like pure 
genius, is often more a matter of opportunity or 
necessity than actual talent, though it certainly 
is a great convenience, and gives its possessor 
a superior air. " It 's nonsense to learn lan- 
guages, or to try to speak anything but good, hon- 
est English," says a young gentleman here, — an 
American recently graduated from one of the col- 
leges. " You can make your way round with it, 
and everything that 's worth two straws is trans- 
lated." So he brandishes his mother-tongue 
proudly in people's faces, and is always immensely 
disgusted and incensed at their stupidity when he 
is not understood. 

An Englishwoman the other day bought a pic- 
ture of Alpine flowers, and tried to make a man 
understand that she also wished a stick upon 
which the cardboard could be rolled and safely 
carried in her trunk. He knew no English ; she, 
no German. First she spoke very loud, with em- 
phatic distinctness, as if he were deaf. Where- 
upon he made a remark in German, which, though 
an excellent remark, in itself a highly reasonable 
statement, had not the least relation to her re- 
quest. She then spoke slowly, gently, in an en- 
dearing manuer, as if coaxing a child, or endeavor- 



152 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

ing to influence a person whose understanding 
was feeble and who must not be frightened. He 
responded in German, — again sensible, but widely 
inappropriate. So they went on, each continuing 
his own line of thought, as much at cross-purposes 
as if they were insane, until a bystander, taking 
pity on them, came to the rescue. The lady was, 
however, not indignant that her " good, honest 
English" was not understood; she was simply 
despairing. It is singular that it never occurs to 
some minds that other languages, and even the 
people who speak them, may also be good and 
honest. 

Here in the Engadine the dialect is Romanisch, 
but the people also speak German, French, Italian, 
and often tolerable English. The houses are 
solidly built, with very thick walls, curious iron 
knockers, deep-sunken windows, with massive iron 
gratings over them. The object of the gratings 
is doubtful. Some say they are to guard against 
robbers ; some say they are an invention of 
jealous husbands ; some, that they are so con- 
structed in order to allow a maiden and her lover 
to converse without danger of an elopement. 
Arched, wide doors on the ground-floor, directly 
in the front of the house, are large enough to 
admit carts and horses into the basements, which 
serve as carriage-houses and stables. 

Is it really summer 1 ? Is it possible that in our 
beloved America people are suffering from heat, 
that Philadelphia is suffocating] Here ladies 
wear furs and velvet mornings and nights, and 
men wrap themselves in ulsters and shawls. The 



UP TEE AIRY MOUNTAIN. \ 53 

air is the most bracing, — the coolest, dryest, 
purest imaginable. It is considered admirable for 
nervous disorders, and this one can readily believe. 
But though it is the fashion to order consumptives 
here, many eminent physicians say more invalids 
with lung complaints are sent to the Engadine 
than should properly come. It certainly seems as 
if this immensely bracing air would speedily kill 
if it did not cure. " Nine months winter and 
three months cold" is the popular saying here 
about the climate. Delicate persons are often so 
enervated at first by the peculiar atmosphere 
that they cannot eat or sleep or rest in any 
way. — Indeed, with certain constitutions this air 
never agrees. — This condition, however, usually 
passes off in a few days; they feel able to move 
mountains, and accomplish wonders in the way 
of climbing; while people who are well in ordi- 
nary climates come here and forget that they are 
mortal. There is something in the air that gives 
one giant strength and endurance, — something 
inexpressibly delightful, buoyant, and inspiring, — 
something that clears away all cobwebs from the 
brain. 




THE ENGADINE. 



jjHEY say that Auerbach has thought and 
J§C| written much in the beautiful Engadine, 
IS^IS — that many of his mountain descrip- 
' tions are from this grand country. Some- 
where here a seat is shown where he sits and plans 
and dreams. Whether it is due to "ozone," or 
whatever it may be, the heart and lungs do un- 
usual work here, and the brain too. It would 
seem that here, if anywhere, would come inspira- 
tion. And yet, when we remember that Schiller 
wrote his " Wilhelm Tell " without ever seeing 
Switzerland, it teaches us that wide, free genus 
can soar in a narrow room, and only petty, medi- 
ocre talent is really dependent upon its surround- 



They who view the Alps with a critic's eye say 
that the contours in the Engadine are too sharply 
denned, the rocks too bold and rugged, the snow 
too glaring white, the air too clear, the whole effect 
too hard and unmanageable, — all lacking the 
slight haze that is necessary to a perfect mountain 
view. This makes me feel very ignorant and small, 
for I have not yet learned to speak with conde- 
scending approval of one landscape, and with dig- 



THE EN GAD WE. 155 

nified, discriminating censure of another. And 
yet I don't believe these lofty critics could have 
made a grander, nobler Engadine if they had had 
the fashioning of it; and if Nature is lovely in 
her soft, smiling scenes, in her hazes and mists 
and tender lights, so is she also magnificent in her 
strength and rugged grandeur, sublime in her still- 
ness, her frozen heights, as in the Engadine. Most 
unutterably impressive is she here. 

And who shall say that here she does not also 
show us loveliness] The Maloja Pass, for instance, 
that leads, in its remarkable steep, zigzag down, 
down through fragrant woods, where vines and 
moss droop over the rocks, till it reaches a milder 
temperature, and the warm breath of Italy seems 
to touch your cheek. Yon stand high on the cliff 
and look down into the valley, following every cu-. 
rious winding of the road till it meets the plain, 
and goes off towards Chiavenna far away. When 
we saw the Maloja, a group of men who looked 
like bandits were gathered round a fire and a ket- 
tle where polenta was cooking. The people here 
live on polenta. It is n't at all bad. We know, 
because we 've tasted it. We taste everything. 
There is a pretty lake and a pretty waterfall here, 
concealed, and well worth finding ; but the partic- 
ular "sight," the especial thing you must do, is to 
stand on the cliff opposite the inn, and watch the 
diligence as it descends a thousand feet in twenty 
minutes. 

Behind the Kurhaus is a hill with shady seats 
among the trees, where you can sit by one of 
those impatient, impetuous little mountain brooks 



156 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

that come rushing down from the glaciers, and 
that act so young and excited about everything; 
and while it talks to you and tells you its wild 
stories and eager hopes, you say to it, " Wait till 
you 've seen a little more of the w r orld, my dear, 
and you '11 take things more quietly." And the 
water tumbles and foams over the rocks, and sings 
strange things in your ears, and you look off upon 
three peaks with their heads close together like 
Michael Angelo's "Three Fates." You learn to 
love them very much, and to watch their different 
expressions. One is greener, softer, milder than 
the others. One is sharp, cruel, inflexible rock. 
On one, great snow-masses forever lie in stillness, 
solemnity, and peace. 

A little winding path by the water's edge leads 
to Crestalta. Here surely it is not grand, but 
lovely, every inch of the way. The Inn, which 
seems like an old friend now, so often has it met 
us in the Tyrol days, we visit here at its birth- 
place, and hear its baby name, the Seta, for it is 
not the Inn till it leaves the Lake of St. Moritz. 
A coquettish, wayward, merry stream it is in its 
youth, — bubbling and laughing in little falls, — 
stopping to rest in clear enchanted lakes, whose 
depths reflect the skies and clouds and soft green 
banks and Alpine cedars, then rushing on, frolick- 
ing and singing boldly as it goes. 

These are small things to do. They are for the 
first day, before one is accustomed to the air here. 
They are for invalids who must not work for their 
enjoyment. But for the strong, for the blessed 
ones with clear heads and tireless feet, what is 
there not to see that is grand and inspiring ! 



THE EN GAD WE. 157 

0, these mountains, these magical, giant moun- 
tains ! How their silence, their vastness, their ter- 
rible beauty, speak to our restless hearts ! I can 
well believe that mountain races are, as it is said, 
deeply superstitious, for there are times when the 
effect of the mighty, stern heights is simply crush- 
ing. Old heathenish fancies, without comfort, 
without hope, come to us in spite of ourselves. 
What are we, our poor little life-stories, our hopes, 
and our heart-breakings, our wild storms, and 
short, sweet, sunny days, before these cold, eternal 
hills? Above their purple sublimity are cruel 
pagan gods, who do not hear though we cry to 
them in agony. Our feet bleed. Our hearts are 
faint. The chasms swallow us. Rocks crush us. 
Nature is a cruel, mighty tyrant, and our enemy. 

But not only thus do the mountains speak. So 
man}'' voices have they ! So many songs and 
poems and mysteries and tragedies and glories do 
they tell you ! So many strong, sweet chords do 
they strike in your soul ! Did they crush you 
yesterday ? Ah, how they lift you up to-day, and 
heal the wounds they themselves have made, and 
comfort you with a sweet and noble comfort ! They 
tell you how little you are, but they give you a 
great patience with your own littleness. They bid 
you look up, as they do, to the heavens above ; 
to stand firm, as they stand firm ; to take to your- 
self the beauty and the grace of passing sunshine, 
of bird and flower and tree, and song of brook ; to 
take it and rejoice and be glad in it, though the 
gray, sad cliffs are not concealed, and the sorrow- 
ful wind moans in the pines. They whisper un- 



158 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

utterable things to you of this mystery we call 
life, — things which you never, never felt before. 
They fill you with infinite patience and tenderness, 
and send you forth to meet your fate with the 
heart of a hero. Ah, what a pity it is that we 
must ever leave the mountains ; and what a pity 
it is that, if we should remain, the mountains 
might leave us, — might speak less to us, sustain 
and elevate us less ! And yet it does not seem as 
if a heart that had a spark of reverence in it- 
could ever grow too familiar with such majesty. 

From St. Moritz it is not easy to say what ex- 
cursion or mountain tramp is the most enjoyable, 
but, if I were positively obliged to give my opinion, 
I think it would be in favor of the Bernina Pass 
and Palii Glacier. You go first to Pontresina, — 
a place, by the way, especially liked and frequented 
by the English. With the mountains crowding- 
round it, and its glimpse of the Eoseg Glacier, it 
is certainly very beautiful. Samaden, Pontresina, 
and St. Moritz have rival claims and rival cham- 
pions. St. Moritz is, however, to us indisputably 
superior. Not that we love Pontresina less, but 
that we love St. Moritz more. 

On this road the superb Morteratsch Glacier 
greets you, imbedded between Piz Chalchang and 
Mont Pers, and you see the whole Bernina group. 
The Morteratsch Glacier has beautiful blue ice- 
caves, real ones, not artificial as in Interlaken. 

From Pontresina you go higher and higher to 
the Bernina hospice, two thousand feet above St. 
Moritz. Here, side by side, are two small lakes, 
the Lago Nero and the Lago Bianco. The "white" 



THE EN GAD IN E. 159 

lake, coming from the glaciers, is the lightest pos- 
sible grayish-green, and the dark one is spring- 
water, and looks purplish-blue beside it. It is 
strange to think how far apart the waters of the 
sister lakes flow, — the Lago Nero into the Inn, 
so to the Danube and Black Sea, while the Lago 
Bianco, through the Adda, finds its way to the 
Adriatic. 

To the hospice you can ride, but after that you 
must walk over rough rocks and snow, and 
past pools where feathery white flowers stand up 
straight on tall, slight, stiff stalks, like proud, 
shy girls, and at last you are at the Alp Griim, 
where wonderful things lie before your eyes. The 
magnificent Palii Glacier is separated from you 
only by a narrow valley. You stand before it as 
the sun pours down on its vast whiteness, and 
on the mountain range in which it lies. Far 
below in the ravine the road goes winding away to 
Italy, past the villages of Poschiavo and Le Prese : 
above, the eternal snows ; below, the soft, bloom- 
ing valley, lovely as a smile of Spring, and in the 
distance even a hint of sunny Italy, for you gaze 
afar off upon its mountains wistfully, and feel like 
Moses looking into the Promised Land. 

Everywhere are the brave little Alpine flowers. 
They are very dear, and one learns to feel a pecul- 
iar tenderness towards them, as well as to be 
astonished at their variety and abundance. There 
are many tiny ones whose names I do not know, 
but their little star-faces smile at you from amaz- 
ingly rough, high places. 

About the Edelweiss much fiction has been writ- 



160 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

ten. It is true that it often grows in rather inac- 
cessible spots, hut it is not at all necessary to peril 
one's life in order to pluck it ; and we must regret 
fully abandon the pretty, old legend that the bold 
mountaineer, when he brings the flower to his 
sweetheart, gives her also the proof of his valor 
and devotion, and his willingness to risk all for 
her dear sake. It is interesting and exciting to 
fmd these flowers, — they do grow at a noble 
height, — and here in the Engadine, at this sea- 
son, and in this vicinity, they are rare. But, 
sweethearts, of all ages, sexes, and conditions, 
who will shortly receive from me Edelweiss in let- 
ters, do not be disappointed to hear that, though 
my hands were full to overflowing, I plucked them 
in gay security, with my feet on firm ground; and 
there was only one single place where it was n't 
pleasant to look dow r n, or, to be more impressive, 
where a yawning abyss threatened to ingulf me. 

The Edelweiss is certainly very good to find and 
send home in a letter, it is so suggestive of dan- 
gerous cliffs, horrible ravines, and immense daring, 
as well as telling very sweetly its little story of 
blooming in lonely beauty on the high Alps ; but 
that any especial valor is required to obtain it, is, 
if the truth be told, a mere fable. 

And the last grain of romance vanishes when 
w r e hear that shrewd guides bring the flowers down 
from their own heights, and set them in the path 
of enthusiastic but not high-climbing ladies, who 
in their delight are w T ildly lavish of fees. The 
Devil can quote Scripture for his purpose, and the 
pure, precious little flower can be used as a trap 
by mercenary man. 




RAGATZ. 

VER the Albula Pass we came from St. 
Moritz to Chur, and when we went, it 
was by the Julia. How grand we feel 
going over these great mountain-passes, 
where Roman and German emperors, with all their 
vast armies, their high hopes and ambitions, have 
trod, it is quite impossible to express. The em- 
perors are dead and gone, and we, an insignificant 
but merry little party, ride demurely over the self- 
same route. Blessed thought that the mountains 
are meant for us as much as they were for the 
emperors ; that the beauty and grandeur and love- 
liness of nature, everywhere, is our own to enjoy ; 
that it has been waiting through the ages, even 
for us, to this day! It is our own. No king or 
conqueror has a larger claim. 

This was one of the tranquil, joyous days that 
have so much in them, — a day of clear thoughts, 
unwearying feet, unspeakable appreciation of na- 
ture, and good-will towards humanity. There was 
a long, bright flood of sunshine, with beautiful 
flakes of clouds floating before a fresh mountain 
wind. The great mountains looked solemnly at 



152 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

us, and the happy laugh of a little child-friend 
echoed through the sombre ravines. 

We passed queer old villages ; small dun cattle 
with antelope eyes and fragrant breath ; wise-look- 
ing goats ; pastures that stretched out their vivid 
green carpets on the mountain-side; and, above all, 
the great snow-slopes. 

We got some supper in a very grave little vil- 
lage. The woman who waited upon us looked as 
if she had never smiled. This made us want some- 
body to be funny. The other travellers were 
matter-of-fact Englishmen, some heavy Jews, and 
particularly eagle-looking Americans. The little 
woman gave us good coffee, sweet black-bread 
and sweeter butter, and eggs so rich and fresh 
we felt that they would instantly transform our 
famishing selves into Samsons. These eggs had 
chocolate-colored shells. The Englishmen, the 
Eagles, and the Jews ate solemnly, as if they had 
eaten brown eggs from their cradles. But we, 
with that curiosity which, whatever it may be to 
others, is in our opinion our most invaluable trav- 
elling companion, — of more profit and importance 
than all the guide-books and maps, often more 
really helpful than friends who have made what 
they call " the tour of Europe " three times, — in- 
quired : — 

" Why, do Swiss hens lay brown eggs 1 " 

To this innocent inquiry the little woman with 
sombre mien replied that she had boiled the eggs 
in our coffee. " Water was scarce, and she always 
did it." 

Not discouraged, w r e remarked w r e would like to 



RAGATZ. 163 

buy the hen that could lay such rich, delicate 
eggs, and take her away in our travelling-bag. 
The fire and the coffee-pot we might be able to 
establish elsewhere, but that hen was a vara avis. 
This small pleasantry caused a little cold ghost of 
a smile to flit over her lips, but it was gone in an 
instant, and she was counting francs in her cotfee- 
colored palm. 

A night in Chur, then the next morning a short 
ride by rail, and we are in Ragatz. Do you know 
what Ragatz is 1 It is, in the first place, to us at 
least, a surprise ; its name is so harsh and ugly, 
and the place is so soft, pretty, and alluring. And 
coming from that wonderful, electrifying St. Mo- 
ritz air directly here, is like dropping from the 
North Pole to the heart of the tropics. It is said 
the change should not be made too suddenly, that 
one should stay a day or two on the route, which 
seems reasonable. Happily our strength is not 
impaired by the new atmosphere, but we feel very 
much amazed. We cannot at once recover our- 
selves. There, it was, as somebody says, "always 
early morning." Here, it is "always "afternoon." 
There, we had broad outlooks, stern, rough lines, 
and vast snow-fields. Here, we are in a lovely 
garden, luxuriant with flowers. Grapes hang, rich 
and heavy, on the trellises. Shade-trees droop 
over enticing walks and rustic seats. Oleanders 
and ^ pomegranate-trees, with their flame-colored 
tropical blossoms, stand in long rows by the lawns. 
Children paddle about in tiny boats on little lakes. 
Rustic bridges cross the stream here and there. 
A young English girl, with golden hair so long and 



164 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

luxuriant that it rather unpleasantly suggests Mag- 
dalen as it falls in great waves to the ground, sits 
sketching, and wears a thin blue jaconet gown, — 
wonderful sight is that blue jaconet ! Only yes- 
terday we left the region of sealskin sacques, break- 
fast-shawls, and shivers. 

The hotel is most charmingly situated. Did I ever 
recommend a hotel in my life 1 It is a rash thing 
to do, but I feel impelled to advise people to come 
here to the Quellenhof. We live, not in the hotel 
proper, but in one of the " dependencies," the Her- 
mitage, a kind of chalet. It is delightful to live 
in a Hermitage, let me tell you. Fuchsias and 
asters and scarlet geraniums make a glory about 
our door. Our windows and balconies look on the 
lake just below. Great trees bend over us, and 
green mountain slopes come down to meet us on 
the other side. Our Hermitage is a quiet, restful 
nest. The people occupying the different rooms 
go softly in and out. We never meet them. 
Marie, with her white cap and white apron, opens 
the door for us as we stand under the fuchsia-cov- 
ered porch. We hear no hurrying steps, no wait- 
ers and bells, or any hotel noises. Every moment 
we like our Hermitage better, and we really think 
we own it. It is all very sweet and soft and 
lotus-eating here, w r ith balmy odors, and drowsy 
hum of bees, and mellow, golden lights on the 
mountains. We feel as if a magician had touched 
us with his wand, and whirled us oft* into another 
planet. No one can say that we as a party have 
not a goodly share of the wisdom that takes things 
as they come, — but Ragatz after St. Moritz ! 



RAGATZ. 165 

That which drew us here is what draws every- 
body to Ragatz, — that is, everybody who is not 
sent by a physician to drink the water and take 
the baths, — the celebrated Pfaffer's Gorge. It is 
well worth a long journey and much fatigue and 
trouble. From Ragatz you walk through the little 
village, then along a narrow road between immense 
limestone cliffs, where the Tamina, that most au- 
dacious of mountain streams, hurls itself angrily 
by you. The cliffs are in some places eight hun- 
dred feet high, and the Gorge is often extremely 
narrow. You pass beneath the vast overhanging 
rocks, the two sides leaning so far towards each 
other that they almost meet in a natural bridge. 
It is cold, damp, and in gloom where you are. You 
look up and see the trees and sunlight far, far 
above you, — the rocks, at times, shut out the 
sky, — and the Tamina acts like a mad thing that 
has broken loose, as it sweeps through the sombre 
Gorge. 

After the walk, — I had no ideas of time or 
distance in regard to it ; everything else was so 
impressive these trifles were banished from my 
mind, — we reached the hot springs, did what 
other people did, and were greatly astonished. 

A man had insisted upon putting shawls upon 
all the ladies of the party. Another man now 
insists upon removing them. There is a cavern 
before you which looks very black and Mephisto- 
phelian. Everybody slowly walks in, — you too. 
It is dark where your feet tread. There are one 
or two men with uncertain, wavering lights that 
seem designed to deceive the very elect. You be- 



IQQ ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

gin to dread snares and pitfalls. The aospheretm 
grows hotter, more oppressive, and more sugges- 
tive every instant. You are certain that you smell 
brimstone, and expect to see cloven hoofs. You go 
but two or three steps, and remain but a few sec- 
onds, the temperature of the cavern is so high, but 
you feel as if you were in the bowels of the earth. 
A man with a light passes you a glass, and you 
fancy you are going to drink molten lead or lava, 
or something appropriate to the scene, and are 
rather disappointed to find it tastes uncommonly 
like hot water, pure and simple. 

Then you turn and go into the light of day, and 
everybody has a boiled look, every face is covered 
with moisture ; and the outer air sends such a chill 
to your very soul, you bless the man whom a few 
moments before you had scorned when he hung 
the ugly brown shawl on your shoulders. You 
seize it with thankfulness, and back again you go 
between the massive rocky walls wdth the Tamina 
shouting boisterously in your ears. 

There is a bath-house near the Gorge for people 
who wish to take the waters near their source. 
The sunlight touches it in the height of summer 
only between ten and four. People go there and 
stay, why, I cannot imagine, unless they have lost, 
or wish to lose, their senses. The guide-books 
speak respectfully of its accommodations, but it is 
the dreariest house I ever saw, with a monastic, or 
rather, prison look, that is appalling ; aud the girl 
who brings you bread-and-butter and wine looks 
at you with a reproving gloom in her eyes, as if 
all days must be " dark and dreary." We felt quite 
frivolous and out of place, lost our appetite, grew 



RAGATZ. 157 

somewhat frightened, and ran away as soon as 
possible. 

The baths at the Quellenhof are pleasant, and 
the water, though conveyed through a conduit two 
miles and a half long, loses very little of its heat. 
It is perfectly clear, free from taste or smell, and 
resembles, they say, the waters of Wild bad and 
Gastein. An eminent German physician told us 
something the other day in regard to the efficacy 
of these crowded baths here, there, and elsewhere 
in this part of the world, — something that was 
both funny and unpleasant to believe. Although 
it is not my theory but his plainly expressed 
opinion, I shall only venture to whisper it for fear 
of. offending somebody. He says it is not by the 
peculiar efficacy of any particular kind of water 
that the bathers in general are benefited, but by 
the simple virtue of pure water freely used ; that 
many people at home do not bathe habitually ; 
and when a daily bath for five or six w r eeks, in a 
place where they live simply and breathe pure air, 
has invigorated them, they gratefully ascribe their 
improvement to sulphur or iron or carbonic acid 
or some other agent, which is really quite innocent 
of special interposition in their case. 

Beside the baths and the Gorge and its ways of 
pleasantness in general, Ragatz has many pretty 
walks along the hills between houses and gardens, 
and up steep, zigzag forest-paths to the ruins of 
Freudenberg and Wartenstein. A broad, sunny 
landscape lies before you, — the valley of the Rhine, 
Falknis in the background, green pastures and 
still waters. Blessed are the eyes that see what 
we see. 







A FLYING TRIP TO THE RHINE FALLS. 




HERE was the rock upon which the Lo- 
relei used to sit and comb her golden 
hair, and sing her wondrous melodies, 
and lure men to destruction 1 Near St. 
Graz, there have been and are, I suppose, Loreleis 
enough in the world besides the famous maiden of 
the poem. We found an admirable place for one, 
yesterday, on the top of the great rock that stands 
quivering in the Falls of the Rhine. We had sent 
our heavy luggage on to Zurich, with that wisdom 
which often characterizes us, and, free as air except 
for hand-bags, went to see the Rhine Falls. 

And first we saw Schaff'hausen, which has a 
pretty, picturesque, mediaeval air, as it lies among 
the hills and vineyards on the banks of the Rhine. 
It has its old cathedral, with the celebrated bell 
cast in 1486, which bears the inscription that sug- 
gested to Schiller — as everybody knows — his 
" Song of the Bell," — " Vivas toco, mortuos 
plango, fulgura frango"; but besides this there is 
not much to see except the tranquil landscape, 
and that, fortunately, one does not lose by going 
farther. 

Most people are, I presume, disappointed in the 



A FLYING TRIP TO THE RI1INE FALLS. K39 

Falls of the Rhine. At least, I know that many 
of my own countrymen pronounce them not worth 
seeing "after Niagara." But — dare I make this 
mortifying confession 1 — what if it is not, "after 
Niagara" % What if Niagara is still to you in the 
indefinite distance 1 It ought not to be, of course. 
(We all know very well " nobody should go to 
Europe wdio has not seen Niagara.") But what if 
it is? Under such circumstances may not one 
find beauty here 1 

And even with the remembrance of Niagara 
clear in your mind, I do not know why the Rhine 
Falls, so utterly different in character, may not 
still be lovely. 

Their height is estimated, including the rapids 
and whirlpools and all, at about one hundred feet, 
which must be very generous measurement, and 
they are three hundred and eighty feet broad. It 
may have been in part owing to the exquisite at- 
mosphere of the day we visited them, it may be 
we expected too little on account of the tales our 
friends had told us, but certainly we found them 
very lovely, and Nature seems to have given their 
surroundings a peculiar grace. The shores are so 
extremely pretty, — the high, bold cliff on one 
side, the soft green slopes on the other ; the row 
of tall, stiff poplars, that look as prim as the typ- 
ical New England housekeeper, and give the land- 
scape that curiously neat appearance, as if every- 
thing were swept and dusted. Then the rocks, 
clothed with vines and moss and shrubs and little 
trees, rise with so fine an effect in the midst of the 
white foaming waters. 



170 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

We saw the falls from every point, — from above 
on the cliff; [what a pity there isn't a tine old, 
tumble-down, " ivy-mantled tower " there, instead 
of the painted, restaurant-looking Schloss Laufen!] 
from the little pavilion and platform at the side, 
where the foam dashes all over you, and you are 
deafened by the roar ; from the top of the central 
rock in the falls ; and from the Neuhausen side. 

To go from shore to shore, just below the falls, 
is really quite an adventure. Your funny flat-boat 
careens about in the most eccentric and inconse- 
quent manner ; the spray envelops you ; it all 
looks very dangerous, and is not in the least. Still 
more eventful is a voyage to the central rock, after 
which our boatman fastens his skiff — which is a 
broad-bottomed scow, to be exact, but skiff sounds 
more poetical — securely. You alight on the wet 
stones, ascend the rough steps cut in the rock, and 
feel that you are doing a novel and interesting 
thing. On the top, amid the shrubs and vines, 
where the Lorelei ought to be, is only an upright 
iron rod. From here we thought the falls were 
seen to the best advantage, and it was a delightful 
experience to be so near and yet so far, — to stand 
so securely amid the foaming, seething mass, to be 
actually in the deafening roar. Mother Nature was 
in a complacent mood when she placed those rocks 
in the midst of the mighty waters. But no, — she 
placed the rocks there long ago, and merely brought 
Father Rhine towards them in later days. So say 
the wise. 

There were myriads of rainbows in the spray. 
On one side was brilliant sunshine flashing on soft 



A FLYING TRIP TO THE RHINE FALLS. ^71 

fields and vine-covered hills ; on the other, as a 
most effective background, against which the white- 
ness of the foam shone out, low black thunder- 
clouds. It was a singular picture, with its strongly 
contrasting hues. We could not help being glad 
that we had never seen Niagara, we found so much 
here to delight in. 

But, friends, a word of advice that comes from 
depths of sad experience. See Niagara before you 
come here. At least, read np Niagara. Be per- 
fectly able to answer all questions as to Niagara's 
height, breadth, and volume, and the character of 
the emotions created in an appreciative soul by 
seeing Niagara. If you cannot, you will suffer. 
Somebody will ask you a Niagara question suddenly 
at a dinner-party, and you will either reply with 
shame that you do not know, or with the courage 
of despair you will make an utterly wild guess, 
and say something that cannot possibly be true. 
There are a great many people in Germany — ex- 
tremely intelligent, and to whom it is a delight to 
listen — who are wonders of information and ap- 
preciation when they talk about German literature 
and German art ; are also on easy terms with the 
ancient Greeks, and possibly with Sanscrit ; but 
when they approach America it is as if that 
beloved land were an undiscovered country, — 
an " unsuspected isle in far-off seas." The one 
thing they positively know is that it has a Niagara. 
Therefore arm yourselves with formidable statis- 
tics, and pass unscathed and victorious through the 
inevitable volley of questions. Personally, I feel 
that I owe Niagara a never-dying grudge ; for, 



172 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

since the harrowing examinations of school com- 
mittees in my youthful days, never have I been 
subjected to catechisms so pertinacious and embar- 
rassing as this pride of our land has caused me. 
I have succeeded at last in fixing the main figures 
in my memory, but am always more or less ner- 
vous when the examination threatens to embrace 
the adjacent country. If it advances like heavy 
battalions, I can calmly meet it. But when it 
comes like light cavalry, is brilliant and inclined 
to skirmish, I tremble. 

It is also well — may I add, for the benefit of 
3 7 oung women contemplating a sojourn in Europe ? 
— to know the population of your native town, its 
area, its distance from the coast, the length of the 
river upon which it is situated, — above all, its lat- 
itude and longitude. This last is of incalculable 
importance. It is safe to assume that the elderly 
German who does n't instantly embark upon Ni- 
agara will eagerly plunge into latitude and longi- 
tude. Perhaps you think you know all these 
things ; others equally confident have been rudely 
torn from their false security. Of course it is 
what we all learned in the primary schools, and we 
are expected to know it still ; but it is astonishing 
what clouds of uncertainty envelop the under- 
standing when you are suddenly asked in a for- 
eign tongue, before eight or ten strangers, for the 
very simplest facts. Men are so stupid about such 
things, you know ! They never ask where the May- 
flowers grow, where the prettiest walks are, where 
you like to drive at sunset, from what point the 
light and shade on the hills over the river is love- 



A FLYING TRIP TO THE RHINE FALLS. \ 79 

Hs3t, — ill fact, anything of real importance ; but 
always they demand these dreary statistics. Was 
there never a great man who hated arithmetic] 

At the Falls of the Rhine people, I regret to 
say, make money too palpably. You buy a ticket 
of a young woman in a pavilion, and she says it 
will take you over the foaming billows and back 
again. A man rows you across, — or, rather, pro- 
pels the boat in a remarkable manner to the oppo- 
site shore, — when another man demands some 
more francs for allowing you to stand on his plat- 
form, get very wet and very enthusiastic. You 
ascend to Schloss Laufen, and pay a franc for look- 
ing at the Falls from that point of view. Eager to 
see them from every possible place, you come down 
and tell your ferryman to take you to the great rock, 
that looks so tempting, so hazardous, so altogether 
enticing, with the foam dashing against it. The 
boat, as it makes this passage, is the most agitated 
object imaginable. You survey the Falls from the 
rock, and at last are content. You gather a few 
leaves and some of the common flowers that grow 
upon it, and you almost, from force of habit, give it 
also a franc. Then the boat, with convulsive lurches 
and dippings and bobbings, plunges through the 
rough waters, and finally you reach your original 
point of embarkation. The ferryman, an inno- 
cent-looking blond, — your innocent-looking blonds 
are invariably the worst kind of people to deal 
with, — smilingly demands a fabulous number of 
francs, not alone because he has taken you to the 
rock, which you knew was an extra, but for the 
whole trip, for which you have already paid. You 



174 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

are afraid of losing your train. Your friends are 
high on the bank, wildly beckoning, and waving 
frantic handkerchiefs from afar. There is no time 
for expostulation, and already fresh victims are 
tilling the boat. You mutter, — 

" Take, boatman, thrice thy fee," 

which would be a greater comfort if he understood 
English as well as he does extortion, and then you 
climb the steep bank and hurry after the retreat- 
ing figures. You depart impressed with the mag- 
nitude of the Falls of the Rhine, and quite con- 
scious of a not insignificant fall of francs in your 
purse. 




DOWN FROM THE HIGH ALPS. 




T is not wise to visit what are called the 
High Alps first and then make the tour 
of the Swiss cities. This order should 
be reversed. From loveliness we should 
ascend to grandeur, and not come down from 
Eugadine heights, and space and air, to cities, 
pretty lakes, purplish hills, and white peaks in the 
background. If we were to see Switzerland again 
for the first time — is n't this a tolerably good 
Irishism 1 — and knew as much about it as we do 
now, — which does n't by any means imply that 
we could n't easily know more, — we would cer- 
tainly not do as we have done, especially if, as at 
present, we were expected to chronicle our emo- 
tions. The fact is, when you come down from the 
heights there is a palpable ebb in your impres- 
sions. How can it be otherwise 1 You glide in 
well-oiled grooves over the regular routes of travel. 
You see what you have seen in pictures and read 
of in books all your life. It is perfectly familiar, 
and how can you have the audacity to be very 
diffuse about it 1 Experiences in well-conducted 
hotels are not so suggestive as in the rougher 
mountain life. It is all very comfortable, very 



176 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

lovely. Strange — is it not 1 — that there come 
moments when one tires of the comfort and is im- 
patient with the loveliness, and longs for some- 
thing different, — for grand heights, even if the 
rocks towering to the skies are fierce and cruel 
looking ; for the depth of the gloomy ravines ; for 
the loneliness and cold of the gray, barren peaks ; 
for the sense of space, immensity, even when harsh- 
ness goes with it ! 

We have, then, left the High Alps. We are 
now in the region of fine hotels, brilliantly lighted 
rooms, flirtations on the piazza, and long trains. 
We go where all the world goes, see what all 
the world sees, fare sumptuously every day, and, 
whether we are arrayed in purple and fine linen 
or not, at least we see other people so clothed 
upon. 

Zurich, the busy, flourishing, learned Swiss 
town on its pretty lake, we have just left, with its 
two rivers running up through the heart of it ; 
with its bridges and its pleasure-boats ; the villages 
and orchards and vineyards on the fertile banks of 
the lake as far as the eye can reach ; the lovely 
views of the Alps. — the perpendicular Reisett- 
stock ; the Drusberg, " like a winding staircase " ; 
the Kammlisstock ; great horns in the Rorstock 
chain ; the pyramidal Bristenstock, which is on the 
St. Gothard route ; and many, many others, if the 
day be clear. Beautiful views of land and lake 
you can get from different points here. It cer- 
tainly could have been nothing less than lack of 
amiability or lack of taste that made us dis- 
satisfied. Had we seen it first, we might have 



DOWN FROM THE HIGH ALPS. yj*j 

been beside ourselves with delight. " Yes, it is 
very beautiful," we say, quite calmly, and it is ; 
but — 

Zurich was in short, to us, agreeable, but not 
fascinating. We liked it, but left it without a re- 
gret. Our emotions were not largely called into 
play by anything. Perhaps our liveliest sensation 
was occasioned by the discovery that at that excel- 
lent hotel, the Baur au Lac, we were formally re- 
quested to fee no one, a reasonable amount for 
service being charged daily in the bill. This was 
a relief indeed. Often one would gladly pay 
double the sum he gives in fees merely to escape 
the hungry eyes and ever-ready palms. Another 
sensation was seeing Count Arnim. He is quite 
gray, and looks delicate. 

The people in the hotels are often a source of 
amusement to us. We consider them fair game, 
when they are very comical, because — who 
knows 1 — perhaps we also are amusing to them. 
Some faces, however, look too bored and miserable 
to be amused by anything. It is very inelegant 
never to be bored, — to like so many different 
people, ways, thoughts, things. We often feel 
mortified that we are so much amused, but the 
fault is ineradicable. 

There is an Englishwoman of rank, whom we 
have met recently in our wanderings, — exactly 
where I dare not tell. She comes every day to 
table d'hote with a new bonnet, and each bonnet 
is more marvellously self-assertive than its pre- 
decessor. She bears a well-known name. She is 
my Lady E ton ; but if she were only Mrs. 



278 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

Stubbs from Vermont, I should say she had more 
bonnets, more impudence, and more vulgar curios- 
ity than any woman I had ever seen. She seized 
the small boy of our party in her clutches at din- 
ner, where an unlucky chance placed him by her 
side, and questioned him minutely and mercilessly 
during the six courses. Who was his father? 
Who was his mother % Had he a sister 1 Had he 
a brother 1 What did his father do ? Where did 
he live, and how ] Where did we come from 1 
W'here were we going 1 How long were we going to 
stay 1 And what were all our names 1 Was the 
young lady engaged to be married to the young 
man'? How old w T as the child's mamma] How 
old were we all 1 And so on ad infinitum. The 
boy, though old enough to feel indignant, was not 
old enough to know how to escape, and so help- 
lessly, with painful accuracy, answered her ques- 
tions ; but on the very delicate point of age we were 
providentially protected by a childish, honest " I 
don't know." Some of us who are more worldly- 
wise and wicked than the little victim heartily re- 
gretted fate had not given us instead of him to our 
lady of the bonnets. It would have been so deli- 
cious to make her ribbons nutter with amazement 
at the astonishing tales told by us in reply ! Cer- 
tainly, under such circumstances, it is legitimate 
to call in a little imagination to one's aid. 

Our cousins, the English, whom we meet on the 
Continent, are very much like the little girl of the 
nursery-rhyme, — when they are good the} r are 
" awfully good," and when they are bad they are 
"horrid." No one is more truly kind, refined, and 



DOWN FROM THE HIGH ALPS. 179 

charming than an agreeable Englishman or Eng- 
lishwoman ; no one more utterly absurd than a 
disagreeable one. Possibly this impresses us the 
more strongly on account of the cousinship. Are n't 
our own unpleasant relatives invariably a thousand 
times more odious to us than other people's 1 

I saw a pantomime the other day which, though 
brief, was full of meaning. A German lady and 
gentleman, quiet-looking, well-bred people, were 
walking through a long hotel corridor. The gen- 
tleman stepped forward in order to open the door 
of the salon for the lady. From another door 
emerges an Englishman with an unattractive face 
and dull, pompous manner. He is also en route 
for the salon, and, not noticing the lady, steps 
between the two. The German throws open the 
door and waits. The burly Englishman, solemn 
but gratified, accepting the supposed courtesy as a 
perfectly fitting tribute from that inferior being, a 
foreigner, to himself and the great English nation, 
pauses and makes in acknowledgment a profound 
bow, which, being utterly superfluous and unex- 
pected, strikes the lady coming along rapidly to 
pass through the doorway, and, naturally imagin- 
ing the second gentleman, too, was waiting for 
her, literally and with force strikes her and nearly 
annihilates her. The Englishman turns in utter 
wonder and gazes at the lady. The three gaze at 
one another. Everybody says, " I beg your par- 
don." The Englishman, as the facts dawn upon 
his comprehension, has the grace to turn very red, 
but has not the grace to laugh, which would be 
the only sensible thing to do, — too sensible, ap- 



130 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

parently, for a man who goes about thinking 
strange gentlemen will delight in smoothing his 
path and opening doors for him. Of course, he 
ought to have known instinctively there was a 
lady in the case, as there always is. The two 
Germans were too polite to laugh unless he would. 
But he did not even smile, which proclaimed his 
stupidity more clearly than all which had gone 
before ; and presently three very constrained faces 
— one red and sullen, two with dancing eyes and 
lips half bitten through — appeared in the salon, 
which, this time, the lady entered first. It is n't 
so very funny to tell, but the scene was so funny 
to witness, it really seemed a privilege to be the 
solitary spectator. 

From Zurich on to Lucerne, with pretty pic- 
tures all the way from the car windows. We an- 
ticipated feeling romantic here, but so far all we 
know is that Lucerne looks very drab. It rains 
in torrents, a hopeless, heavy flood. The lake 
does not smile at us, or dimple or ripple, as we 
have read it is in the habit of doing. The moun- 
tains we ought to be seeing don't appear. The 
streets are shockingly muddy. We cannot go to 
see the Lion ; and as to the Rigi, upon which our 
hopes are set, there is small chance that it will 
at present emerge from its clouds, and allow us to 
behold from the Kulm the wonderful sunrise and 
sunset which many go out for to see, but most, 
alas ! in vain. 

Great Pilatus tells us to hope for nothing. He 
is the "barometer of the region. He is very big 
and rugged and inspiring, and stands haughtily 
apart from the other heights : — 



DOWN FROM THE HIGH ALPS. ^gl 

" Overhead, 
Shaking his cloudy tresses loose in air, 
Rises Pilatus with his windy pines." 

A popular rhyme runs to the effect that when 
Pilatus wears his cap only, the day will be fair ; 
when he puts on his collar, you may yet venture ; 
but if he wears his sword, you 'd better stay at 
home. To-day he wears cap, collar, sword, — in 
fact, is clothed with clouds, except for a moment 
now and then, to his very feet. There are many 
old legends about Pilatus and its caverns. One 
of the oldest is, that Pontius Pilate, banished from 
Galilee, fled here, and in anguish and remorse 
threw himself into the lake ; hence the name of 
wliich the more matter-of-fact explanation is Mons 
Pileatus, or " capped mountain." If there were 
sunshine, we would believe the latter simple and 
reasonable definition. Now, in this dreary rain, 
we take a gloomy satisfaction in the dark tale of 
remorse, — the darker, more desperate and tragic 
it is made, the better we like it. 

Pilatus and the skies and wind and barometer, 
and fate itself, apparently, are against us. But 
the Rigi is still there. Behind the cloud is the 
sun still shining, — patience is genius, and — we 
wait. 




BY THE LAKE OF LUCERNE. 




HO was so wicked as to call Lucerne 
" drab " 1 If it were I, I don't remem- 
ber it, and I never will acknowledge it, 
though the printed word stare me in the 
face. After the rain it shone out in radiant colors, 
■ — the pretty city with its quaint bridges, and the 
Venice-look of some of the stone houses that rise 
directly from the lake ; the water plashing softly 
against their foundations, the little boats moored 
by their sides. People who have seen Venice are 
at liberty to smile in a superior way if they wish. 
We, who have not, will cherish our little fancies 
until reality verifies them or proves them false. 
And the lake, — 

"The Lake of the Four Forest Cantons, apparelled 
In light, and lingering like a village maiden 
Hid in the bosom of her native mountains, 
Then pouring all her life into another's, 
Changing her name and being," — 

how lovely it is ! Roaming there at sunset was 
an ever-memorable delight : — the happy -looking 
people under the chestnut-trees on the shore, the 
little boats dancing lightly about everywhere, the 
pleasant dip of the oars, the chiming of evening 



BY THE LAKE OF LUCERNE. -[83 

bells ; on one side, the city, with its old watch- 
towers and slender spires ; over the water, the 
piled-up purple mountains, with the warm opaline 
sunset lights playing about them; behind, the long- 
range of pure-white peaks, catching the last rays 
of the sun, glistening and gleaming gloriously, 
while the lower world sinks into gloom, and even 
they at last grow dim and vague, and still we float 
on in drowsy indolence. 

The narrow covered bridges, the one where the 
faded old paintings represent scenes from Swiss 
history, and the Miihlenbriicke with the " Dance 
of Death " picture described in the " Golden Le- 
gend," were both interesting. Prince Henry and 
Elsie seemed to go by with all the stream of life, 
— the soldiers, and peasant-girls, and monks, and 
workingmen in blouses, and children with baskets 
on their backs ; and queer old women we met as 
we stood by the little shrine in the middle of the 
bridge, peered in and saw the candles and flowers 
and crucifixes, or looked out through the small 
windows upon the swift waters beneath. So faint 
and obscure are many of the paintings, yet we 
found the ones we sought, and saw the 

" Young man singing to a nun 
Who kneels at her devotions, but in kneeling 
Tarns round to look at him ; and Death, meanwhile, 
Is putting out the candles on the altar." 

The old church with the celebrated organ, which 
may be heard every afternoon, has some carved 
wood and stained glass that people go to see. Its 
churchyard, so little, so old, so pitifully crowded, 
is a sad place, like all the cemeteries I have yet 



184 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

seen here. With their colored ornaments and 
tinsel, their graves crowding one against another, 
and the multitude of sad, black, attenuated little 
crosses that have such a skeleton air, they are posi- 
tively heartbreaking : they seem infinitely more 
mournful and oppressive than ours at home, with 
their broad allej-s, stateky trees, and the peace and 
beauty of their surroundings. There are two new T - 
made graves in the pavement here. You cau't help 
feeling sorry they are so very crowded. They 
are covered with exquisite fresh flowers, which the 
passer-by sprinkles from a font that stands near, 
thus giving a blessing to the dead. We have had 
ample opportunity to observe all the old monu- 
ments and epitaphs without voluntarily making a 
study of the churchyard, for the way to and from 
our chalet led through it. To one very ancient 
stone we felt positively grateful because its inscrip- 
tion was funny : — 

" Here lies in Christ Jesus 
Josepha Dub 
Jungfrau 
Aged 91." 

We w r ere glad to have Miss DuVs somewhat 
prolonged life of single-blessedness to smile over, 
so heavy otherwise was the atmosphere of that 
little churchyard. 

The celebrated Lion of Lucerne we found even 
more beautiful than we had anticipated. It was 
larger and grander, and the photographs foil to 
convey a true idea of it, and of the exact effect of 
the mass of rock above it. It all comes before 
you suddenly, — the high perpendicular sandstone 



BY THE LAKE OF LUCERNE. ]_g5 

rock, the grotto in which the dying Lion lies, 
pierced through by a broken lance, his paw shel- 
tering the Bourbon lily ; the trees and creeping 
plants on the very top of the cliff, at its base the 
deep dark pool surrounded by trees and shrubs. 
The Lion is cut out of the natural rock, a simple 
and impressive memorial in honor of the officers 
and soldiers of the Swiss Guard who fell in de- 
fence of the Tuileries in 1792. They exhibit 
Thorwaldsen's model in the little shop there, 
which is one of the beguiling carved wood-ivory- 
amethyst places where, I suppose, strong-souled 
people are never tempted, but we, invariably. 
There are lovely heads of Thorwaldsen here, by 
the way, the most satisfactory I have seen. 

We live in a pension, a chalet on the banks of 
the lake. It has, like most things, its advantages 
and disadvantages. From our balcony we look 
out over shrubs and little trees upon the lovely 
lake and the mountains. The establishment boasts 
numerous retainers, mostly maids of all work ; but 
our attention is drawn exclusively to a small, pale 
girl, whom we call the " Marchioness," and a small, 
pale boy, whom we call " Buttons." Why need 
such mites work so hard 1 Buttons is only four- 
teen, and he drags heavy trunks about and moves 
furniture and does the work of two men, besides 
running on all the errands, and blacking all the 
boots,* and waiting at the table. 

If you ask him if things are not too heavy he 
smiles brightly and says, " No, indeed ! " with the 
air of a Hercules, so brave a heart has the little 
man. So he goes about lifting and pulling and 



186 



ONE YEAR ABROAD. 



staggering under heavy loads, and breathing hard, 
and he has a hollow cough that it makes the heart 
ache to hear from such a child ; and it does not 
require much wisdom to know what is going to 
happen to him before long, — poor little Buttons ! 




UP AND ON AND DOWN THE RIGI. 




RUTH is mighty. We have been up the 
Rigi Railway, and in spite of the beauty 
before our eyes, instead of experiencing 
grand and elevated emotions, instead of 
remembering the words of some noble poet, in- 
stead of doing anything we ought to have done, 
we could only, prompted by a perverse spirit, say 
over and over to ourselves, — 

" General Gage was very brave, 
Very brave, particular ; 
He galloped up a precipice, 
And down a perpendicular." 

Our Rigi experience, taken all in all, was an 
agreeable and a very amusing outing. We had 
waited long till skies were fair enough for us to 
venture, but at last Pilatus looked benign, and we 
had the loveliest of sails across that lovely lake, 
Lucerne ; happy sunlight falling on blue water 
and exquisite snores, shadows of floating clouds 
reflected in the depths ; and all the noble army of 
mountains thronging before us, and beside us, and 
behind us ; bold barren hills rising sharply against 
rich and varied foliage ; superb white heights afar 
off. At Vitznau we waited a short time for our 



188 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

train, and employed ourselves happily in watching 
a great group of fruit-sellers, who stood with liuge 
baskets of fine grapes, and poor peaches, and figs, 
before the bench where we were sitting. After 
the fashion of idle travellers, we audibly made our 
comments upon the pretty scene : — 

" If I had not already bought this fruit, I 
should buy it of that little boy ; I always like to 
buy my fruit of little boys." 

" And if I had not already bought mine, I 
should buy it of the man with the long tassel 
on his cap : I dote on buying fruit of good-looking 
young men with tassels on their caps." 

"Who could dream that this utterly inane con- 
versation would be understood ? But the face of 
the youth with the tassel — he looked Italian, 
although he was speaking German — suddenly 
gleamed and sparkled mischievously, and showed 
a row of white teeth, as he pointed at his head 
and touched his tassel and said, "Cap! cap!" 
with huge satisfaction and pride. Not another 
English word could he say, but the similarity be- 
tween this and the German Kappe, and his quick 
intuition, told him that we were alluding, and not 
unpleasantly, to him. 

Traveller, beware ! Don't buy fresh figs at Vitz- 
nau. We each pursued one to the bitter end; 
then politely presented what remained in our paper 
to a small fruit-seller, to devour if she liked, or to 
sell over again to the next guileless person who 
has never eaten fresh figs, and wants to be Oriental. 
This civility on our part was received with laughter 
by the whole group of men, women, and children, 



UP AND ON AND DOWN THE RIG I. ^39 

who all seemed to perfectly appreciate the point of 
the joke. It at least was consoling. Being cheated 
in buying fruit is an evil that can be borne, but it 
is an utterly crushing sensation when people won't 
smile at your jokes. 

The carriage which was to take us up the preci- 
pice we surveyed with curiosity and pleasure, — one 
broad car with open sides, affording perfect com- 
mand of the views, the seats running quite across 
it and turned towards the locomotive, which, going 
up, runs behind. Between the ordinary rails are 
two rails with teeth, upon which a cog-wheel in the 
locomotive works. The train runs very slowly, 
only about three miles an hour, which is both safe 
and favorable to enjoyment of the scenery, and in 
case of accident the car can be instantly detached 
from the locomotive and stopped. No one need 
think that I am giving these few facts as informa- 
tion, the very last thing one wants to find in a let- 
ter from Europe. I would not presume, — and of 
course almost everybody knows how the Rigi Rail- 
way works ; only, it happens, / did not know, and 
I mention these things merely to refresh my own 
memory. 

So far as views are concerned, it is of course 
preferable to make the ascent on foot. But where 
one is bewildered by the affluence of beauty in 
Switzerland, one feels willing to sacrifice something 
of it to the new experience of this curious ride. 
Some people, it is true, like to say they walked up 
the Rigi. But why shall we indulge in so small a 
vanity, when we can easily indulge in a greater 
one, — several thousand feet greater, in fact % 



190 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

When any one boasts, "I walked up the Rigi," we 
shall return quietly, " We ascended Piz Languard 
in the Engadine." For all the world knows the 
Rigi is only 5,905 feet high, and Piz Languard is 
10,715 feet. We felt that we could afford to ride 
up the Rigi, then. 

It was all extremely spirited and enjoyable, and 
we could never forget how strongly we resembled 
General Gage. The views w r ere beautiful and 
ever varying. The atmosphere was slightly hazy, 
so that the dark Biirgenstock beyond the lake, 
which lay in loveliness before us, became more 
and more shadowy as we ascended ; and the Stans- 
erhorn and Pilatus, and all the Alps of the Uri, 
Engelberg, and Bernese Oberland, though distinct, 
had yet the thinnest possible veil before their 
faces ; and the precipice above us was amazing to 
see, and the perpendicular reached down, clown 
into deep ravines, where the narrow waterfalls 
looked like silver threads among the trees and 
bushes and gray, jagged rocks. 

Reaching the hotels that stand on the tip-top 
of the Kulm, we went to the one that had stoves, 
which is the Schreiber, for " bitter chill it was." 
We had barely time to see the whole magnificent 
prospect, before the clouds closed in upon us, en- 
veloping us in such a thoroughgoing way that we 
could only allude to the sunset with shrieks of 
laughter. And up to the time of the arrival of 
the latest train came pilgrims from every quarter, 
also bent on seeing the sunset from the Rigi Kulm. 
Group after group came up through the mist from 
the little station to the hotel, every body very merry 



UP AND ON AND DOWN THE RIGL \q\ 

over his own blighted hopes. Towards evening it 
rained heavily, and there was nothing to do bat 
amuse one's self within doors. This is not difficult 
at the Schreiber, an unusually large and well ar- 
ranged hotel. To find such spacious, brilliant 
salons up here is a surprise ; and when you look 
about in them and see parsons from many different 
grades of society, many nations, and hear almost 
every language of Europe, and realize that you 
are all here tog3ther on a mountain-top and fairly 
in the clouds, it is quite entertaining enough with- 
out the books and papers which are at your service. 
There were even two Egyptian princes there. The 
small boy of our party, whom every one notices and 
pats, and who, though speaking absolutely nothing 
but English, has a miraculous way of being under- 
stood and of conversing intimately with Russians, 
Poles, Greeks, etc., was on friendly terms with the 
Egyptians at once, and, after five minutes' ac- 
quaintance, had made his usual demand for post- 
age-stamps. By the grace of childhood much is 
possible. 

Truly this Kigi Kulm is a curious place. It 
is said the spectacle of sunrise rarely deigns to 
appear before the expectant mortals who throng- 
there to see it. Half an hour before sunrise, in 
fair weather, an Alpine horn rouses the sleepers, 
and people rush out, often in fantastic garb, with 
blankets round them and a generally wild-Indian 
aspect. There is actually a notice on every bed- 
room door in the Rigi Kulm House, requesting 
guests to be good enough not to take the coverings 
from the beds when they go to see the sunrise. 



192 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

A strange, wild place was the Kulm as the night 
advanced. The wind howled, and shrieked, and 
moaned, and witches on broomsticks flew round and 
round the house and tapped noisily on our window- 
panes. If you don't believe it, stay there one night 
in a storm, and then you will believe anything. 
But though storm and night and cloud encircled 
us, we saw vividly, as we sank into our dreams, 
the whole superb landscape, — forests, lakes, hills, 
towns, villages, plains, the waves of mist in the 
valleys, the ever-changing light and shade, the 
little fleecy clouds wreathing the glistening snowy 
peaks, the sunshine and the glorious sky. The 
wide, calm picture was before us still. 

It was a night of witchy noises, of starts and 
fears that we should oversleep and so lose the sun- 
rise, which, in spite of the storm, the predictions 
of the weather-wise, and the promptings of com- 
mon-sense, it was impossible for our party not to 
confidently expect, so strong an element in it was 
the sanguine temperament. From midnight on, 
one figure or another might have been seen stand- 
ing by the window, two excited, staring eyes peer- 
ing wildly through the shutters, anxious to discern 
the first glimmerings of dawn ; and from every 
restless nap we would awake with a start, thinking 
we surely heard that " horn." If the other people 
were as absurd as we, they were quite absurd 
enough. That Rigi sunrise, whether it comes cr 
is only anticipated, is enough to shake a constitu- 
tion of iron. 

But no horn sounded, and the lazy sun only 
struggled through the clouds as late as eight 



UP AND ON AND DOWN THE RIGI. 193 

o'clock, when the view once more opened before us, 
grand and beautiful in the sudden gleam of morn- 
ing sunshine. The Bernese Alps magnificently 
white, — the Jungfrau, Finster-Aarhorn, many well- 
known peaks in raiment of many colors ; the lakes 
of Lucerne and Zug directly below, and seven or 
eight more lakes visible, — in all, a beautiful pros- 
pect, and remarkable from the fact that the gaze 
sweeps over an expanse of three hundred miles. 

Very soon the clouds rolled in again. Not a 
vestige of view remained, and a persistent drizzle 
sent several car-loads of disappointed but amused 
beings down the mountain. We all began to be 
sceptical about that Rigi Kulm sunrise which we 
had heard described in glowing words. We were 
inclined to doubt whether any one, even the oldest 
inhabitant, had ever seen it. 

Some writer says it is dismal on the Kulm in 
wet weather. I think if there were only one poor, 
drenched, frozen mortal up there aspiring to gaze 
upon the glory that is denied him, it would be dis- 
mal in the extreme ; but when so many, scores, 
hundreds, go, and so few attain their object, — for 
the summit of the Rigi is often surrounded with 
clouds, even in fairest weather, — it is not in the 
least dismal ; on the contrary, highly enlivening, 
and the trip well worth taking, though it end in 
clouds. 

In the language of a young Russian gentleman 
who is learning English, "I have made a little tripe, 
and enjoyed my little tripe delicious." 



A KAISER FEST. 




E have been having in Stuttgart what an 
intensely loyal newspaper-pen calls " Kai- 
ser days." That is, days in which the 
city has been glorified by the imperial 
presence. We have been having, too, " Kaiser 
weather," for they say the hale old man whenever 
he comes brings with him sunshine and clear skies. 
Before his arrival all was flutter and expectation. 
Festoons and wreaths and inscriptions, waving 
banners, bright ribbons and flowers, were every- 
where displayed, giving the whole place a happy, 
welcoming air. The decorations were extremely 
effective and graceful. Konigstrasse, the chief 
business street, looked like a bower. Lovely great 
arches were thrown across it, and every building 
was gay with garlands, flowers, and flags. The 
variety of the designs was as noticeable as their 
beauty. Sometimes the colors of the Empire and 
those of Wurtemberg — the black, white, and red, 
and black and red — floated together. Sometimes 
to these was added the Stuttgart city colors, black 
and yellow. Many buildings displayed, with these 
three, the Prussiap black and white, while other 
great blocks had large flags of Prussia and \Y jirten> 



A KAISER FEST. 195 

berg and the Empire as a centre ornament, and 
myriads of little ones, representing all the German 
States, fluttering from every window. One saw 
often the yellow and red of Baden, the green and 
white of Saxony, the white and red of Hesse- Darm- 
stadt, and the pretty, light-bine and white of Ba- 
varia, that always looks so innocent and girlish, 
amid so much warlike red and bold yellow, as if 
it were meant for dainty neckties and ribbons, and 
not for the colors of a nation. Many good souls 
mourn that even now, after its consolidation, the 
German Fatherland is so very much divided into 
little sections. Let them take comfort where it 
may be found. Were not the rainbow hues of 
banners and ribbons a goodly sight in the pleasant 
September sunshine? Ribbons, too, have their 
uses, and these, of many colors, were a thousand 
times more effective than any one flag duplicated 
again and again, even the stars and stripes. Pretty 
and joyous were they, floating on the breeze : 
they told tales of the different lands they repre- 
sented, and it was no light task at first to under- 
stand their languages, there were so very many of 
them, such multitudes of brave little banners of 
brilliant hues, and all to welcome the Kaiser. 

" Hail to our Kaiser ! " said one inscription, ■ — ■ 
" Welcome to Suabia ! " Poems, too, in golden 
letters fitly framed, were here and there waiting 
to meet him and do him honor. But the prettiest 
greeting was the simplest : " To the German Kaiser 
a Schwdbisch Gruss Gott" which was over an ever- 
green arch in the Konigstrasso, and looked so very 
sturdy and honest in the midst of all the pomp 



196 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

and the grand inscriptions that called him Barba- 
blanca, Imperator, and Triumphator. The house 
of General von Schwarzkoppen, commander of the 
Wiirtemberg troops, and the house of the Minister 
of War also, displayed, with the national colors, 
stacks of arms of every description, from those of 
ancient times down to the present day, at regular 
intervals between the windows, under long green 
festoons. At the American Consul's the flags of 
Germany hung with the stars and stripes. Ears 
of corn and cornflowers, which are the Kaiser's 
Lieblingshlumen, were woven into the wreaths on 
one house. Everywhere were evidences of busy 
fingers and happy ideas. At 4 p. m. of the 22d, 
while a salute was thundering from the Schutzen- 
haus, the imperial extra train entered the city. 
Even the locomotive looked conscious of sustain- 
ing unwonted honors, proudly wearing a garland 
of oat-leaves round the smokestack, and a circle of 
little fluttering flags. 

At the moment the train came into the station 
the band accompanying the guard of honor gave a 
brilliant greeting, to which was added the " Hoch " 
of welcome. His imperial majesty the Kaiser de- 
scended from the car and embraced his majesty 
the king, who was waiting on the platform to re- 
ceive him. While the crown prince, the grand 
dukes of Baden and Mecklenhiirg-Schwerin, Prince 
Karl of Prussia, Prince August of Wiirtemberg, 
and other distinguished persons were coming out 
of the train, the Kaiser stepped in front of the sol- 
diers and greeted the generals, ministers, and all the 
gentlemen of the court who were there, cordially. 



A KAISER FEST. 



197 



Then the Oherbiir germeister, with committees in 
black coats and white rosettes behind him, in be- 
half of the city, made his little speech, wiiich I will 
not quote because we all know what mayors have 
to say on such occasions, and this was quite the 
proper thing, as mayors' addresses always are. 
Indeed, if I only venture to give the first half- 
dozen words, I fear that people who are not used 
to the German form of expression will be a!armed, 
and will say gently, "Not any more at present, 
thank you." 

" Allerdurchlauchtigster grossn'adigster Kaiser 
uiid Konig allerguadigster Herr ! " This is the 
glorious way it began. Is n't it fine 1 Can any 
one look at that "allerdurchlauchtigster" without 
involuntarily making an obeisance ]• Are n't these 
words entirely appropriate to head a huge pro- 
cession of aldermen, and other pompous munici- 
pal boards, and do credit to a great city 1 And 
wouldn't you or I be a little intimidated if any 
one should say them to us 1 

The Kaiser is, however, accustomed to having 
such epithets hurled at him. He was therefore 
not dismayed, and replied somewhat as follows : — 

" This is the first time since the glorious war of the 
German nation that I have visited your city. I accept 
with pleasure the friendly reception which you have 
prepared for me, and heartily unite with you in the 
good wishes for our German Fatherland which you in 
your greeting have expressed. Until now we have only 
sowed, hut the seed will spring up. In this I rely 
upon your king, who has ever loyally stood by my side. 
[Here he turned and extended his hand to' the king. 
This as a dramatic "point" was very good indeed.] As- 
sure the city that I rejoice to be within its walls." 



198 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

After which were more and more " Hochs," and 
then the illustrissimi seated themselves in the car- 
riages wtych were waiting to convey them slowly 
through the crowded streets. Along the whole 
route where the procession passed were fire-com- 
panies with glittering helmets, different clubs and 
vereins, school-children, — the girls in white, with 
wreaths of flowers to cast before the emperor, — and 
soldiers, all stationed in two long lines. Through 
the alley so formed the carriages passed, and, be- 
hind, the dense crowd reached to the houses. 

The people seemed very eager to see the Kaiser, 
but their curiosity was more strongly manifested 
than their enthusiasm, this first day of his visit, 
at least so it appeared to us. The loyal Tagblatt, 
however, says that the cries of the multitude rose 
to the skies in a deafening clamor, or something 
equally strong. But our eyes and ears told us 
that while the people continuously cheered, they 
were veiy temperate in their demonstrations. There 
was more warmth and volume in the voices when 
they greeted the crown prince. But Moltke alone 
kindled the real fire of enthusiasm. They cheered 
him in a perfect abandonment of delight. Hun- 
dreds of his old soldiers gave the great field-mar- 
shal far more homage than they accorded the 
Kaiser. As soon as lie came in sight there was 
instantly something in the voices that one had 
missed before. 

In the procession, first, were some of the city 
authorities, police and city guard, mounted, pre- 
ceding the carriage in which the Kaiser and king 
rode. This was drawn by six white horses, with 



A KA ISER FES T. \ 9 9 

outriders in scarlet - and - gold livery. The two 
sovereigns chatted together, and the Kaiser looked 
in a friendly way upon the people, often acknowl- 
edging their greetings by a military salute. 

Next came the crown prince, — " the stately, 
thoroughly German hero, with his dark-blond full 
beard," says the German reporter, — and with him 
were the grand duke of Baden and Adjutant Bal- 
dinger. Many carriages followed, full of celebrities. 
Prince Karl of Prussia was there, Prince August 
von Wiirtemberg, Prince of Hohenzollern, Princes 
Wilhelm and Hermann of Saxe- Weimar. In the 
sixth carriage sat the great, silent Moltke, with his 
calm face, received with storms of cheering, and he 
would put up his hand with a deprecating ges- 
ture, as if to appease the tumult his presence cre- 
ated. There were, besides, magnates and dignita- 
ries of all descriptions in the long train. Generals 
and majors and hofraths, counts and dukes, men 
with well-known names, men recognized as brave 
and brilliant soldiers ; but it is scarcely expedient 
to tell who they all are. My pen has so accus- 
tomed itself to-day to writing the names of sover- 
eigns, and to linger lovingly over the beautiful six- 
syllable words that cluster round a throne, it has 
imbibed from these august sources a lofty exclu- 
siveness. It says it really can't be expected to 
waste many strokes on mere dukes. " Everybody 
of course cannot be born in the purple," it admits, 
— this it writes slowly with long, liberal sweeps, — 
" no doubt counts and dukes are often very estima- 
ble people, but really, you know, my dear, one 
must draw the line somewhere " ; and it does not 



200 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

deny that it feels "a certain antipathy towards 
discussing persons lower than princes," — which 
impressive word it makes very black and strong, — 
"except in the mass." And then it waves its 
aristocratic gold point in a way that completely 
settles the matter. I am very sorry if anybody 
would like to know the names, but it is such a 
tyrant I never know what it will do next ; and I 
really don't dare say anything more about those 
poor dukes, except to mention briefly that there 
were seventeen carriages full of manly grace and 
chivalry, uniforms and decorations, scarlet, and 
blue, and crimson, and gold, and white, blond 
mustaches, plumes, swords, and titles. 

When the line of carriages had passed over the 
appointed route, and all the people had gazed and 
gazed to their heart's content, the procession ap- 
proached the Residenz where Queen Olga received 
her imperial relative and guest. He gave her his 
arm, and the} 7 vanished from the eyes of the igno- 
bile vulgus. This was an impressive and elevating 
moment ; but it is not curious to remember that 
after all, if the truth be told, allerdurchlauchtigder 
though he be, he is only her — Uncle William. 

In the evening was a brilliant and large torch- 
light procession, and all the world was out in 
merry mood. The illuminated fountains, the stat- 
ues and flowers in the pretty Schloss Platz, shone 
out in the gleam of Bengal lights, which also re- 
vealed the sea of heads in the square in front of 
the palace. A stalwart young workman stood 
near us with his little fair-haired daughter perched 
on his shoulder. They did not know how statu- 



A KAISER FEST. 201 

esque they looked in the rosy light, but we did. 
Much music, many Hochs, and the edifying spec- 
tacle of all their majesties and royal highnesses in 
a distinguished row on the balcony, for the delec- 
tation of the masses, completed the joys of the 
e veuing. 

If any one imagines for an instant that all this 
very valuable information was obtained without 
much effort, and heroic endurance of many evils, 
he is entirely mistaken. At such times, if you 
wish to see anything, you must either be in and 
of the multitude, or you must look from a win- 
dow, which affords you only one point of view and 
curbs your freedom, and does n't allow you to run 
from place to place in time to see everything there 
is to be seen. At these dramas enacted by high- 
born artists for the purpose of touching the hearts 
and awakening the zeal of the lowly, there are no 
private boxes and reserved seats. We scorned the 
trammelling window, and chose to mingle with our 
fellow-men, with our fellow-butcher-and-baker bo}^s, 
as well as with little knots of intrepid, amused 
women, like ourselves. Upon the whole, we en- 
joyed it. We made studies of human nature, 
aud of policeman nature, which is often not by 
any means human, but, as Sam Weller says, " on 
the contrary quite the reverse." 

Policemen everywhere are glorious, awe-inspir- 
ing creatures. German policemen are particularly 
magnificent. They wear such gay coats, and are 
often such imposing, big blond men, it is impossi- 
ble to look at them without admiration. The way 
they thrust and push when they want to keep a 



202 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

crowd within certain bounds is as ruthless as if 
they were huge automata, with great far-reaching- 
limbs that strike out and hew down when the ma- 
chinery is wound up. Practically they are suc- 
cessful ; the only trouble is, it is the innocent ones 
in front, pushed by the pressure of the crowd be- 
hind, who are thrust back savagely, with a stern 
" Zuriick ! " by the mighty men, and who are 
treated like dumb, driven cattle. A friend who is 
always dauntless and always humorous, feeling the 
weight of a heavy hand on her shoulder, and hear- 
ing a tempestuous ejaculation in her ear, calmly 
looked the autocrat in the face, and with gentle 
gravity said, " Don't be so cross ! " at which the 
great being actually smiled. 

After that we thought perhaps these petty offi- 
cials dressed in a little brief authority only put on 
their crossness with their uniforms. ' Perhaps at 
home with their wives and blue-eyed babies they 
may be quite docile. They may even, here and 
there, — delicious idea ! — be henpecked ! 

This was the sentiment expressed by a loyal 
German at the close of the day : " Lord, now lettest 
thou thy servant depart in peace, for I have seen 
my Kaiser." 





THE CANNSTADT VOLKSFEST. 

jT rained, in the first place, which was 
very inconsiderate of it ; rained on the 
, race-course, on the school-girls in white 
1 '' muslin with wreaths of flowers on their 
heads, on the peasants in their distinctive dresses, 
making their full, white sleeves limp and shape- 
less, spotting the scarlet-and-blue bodices of the 
maidens from the Steinlach Thai and Black For- 
est ; rained on the monkey-shows and negro min- 
strels, the Punch and Judys, the beer-shops, booths, 
and benches, on the country people in their best 
clothes, the city people in their worst, upon all 
that goes to make up the Cannstadt Volksfest, — 
in short, upon the just and the unjust. 

It was a beautiful experience to sit there in a 
waterproof, holding an umbrella and seeing thou- 
sands of other people in waterproofs holding um- 
brellas, on the raised circular seats that extended 
round the whole great race-course, while, occupy- 
ing the entire space, within the track was a mass 
of men standing, also with umbrellas ; but on ac- 
count of our elevated position we could see very 
little of the men, while the umbrella effect was 
gigantic. It was like innumerable giant black 
mushrooms growing in a bog. 

And all the time the band opposite the empty 



204 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

royal pavilion played away with great energy, 
while without this enclosure for the races, among 
the surrounding booths and " shows," country 
people were plunging ankle-deep in the mud, and 
the violins that call the world to see the Fat 
Woman, the accordion which the trained-dog man 
plays, the turbulent orchestras of the small cir- 
cuses, and the siren tones of the girl who sings for 
the snake-charmer, united to make an ineffable 
Pandemonium. 

This Volksfest was founded fifty years ago by 
Wilhelm, father of the present king of Wurtem- 
berg, who did much to promote the agricultural 
interests of his people, taking great personal in- 
terest in everything appertaining to farming, stock, 
etc., giving prizes with his own hand for the best 
vegetables and fruits, the largest, finest cattle, — 
for excellence, in fact, in any department. Since 
then, it is an established national event, that hap- 
pens every year as regularly as September comes ; 
always attracting many foreigners, to whom it is 
amusing and interesting, in the rare opportunities 
it affords of seeing many distinctive features of 
Suabian peasant-life. It should be visited with 
thick boots and no nerves, for the ground is as if 
the cattle upon a thousand hills had come down 
in a great rage and trampled it into pits and quag- 
mires, and the noise is — utterly indescribable. To 
say that the Volksfest combines the peculiar at- 
tractions of the Fourth of July, St. Patrick's Day, 
a State Fair, and Barnum, gives, perhaps, as cor- 
rect a notion of the powwow that reigns supreme, 
as any elaborate description that might be made. 



THE CANNSTADT VOLKSFEST. 205 

Yes, it is like entertainments of a similar grade 
with as, — like, yet unlike. The elephant goes 
round, the band begins to play, the men in front 
of the different tents roar and gesticulate and try 
to out- Herod one another, the jolly little children 
go swinging round hilariously on the great whirli- 
gigs, the man with the blacked face is the same 
cheerful, merry, witty personage who charms the 
crowd at home. Indeed, they are all quite the 
same, only they talk German, they are jollier and 
fatter, they take their pleasure with more abandon, 
and there is one vast expansive grin over the 
whole throng. Instead of the tall, thin girl in 
book-muslin, who comes in from the country to see 
the circus, clinging tight to her raw-boned lover's 
hand, both looking painfully conscious and not so 
happy as they ought, we have here, too, the coun- 
try sweethearts, but of another type. The peasant- 
girl and her Schatz, broad, blissful, rosy, the most 
delicious personifications of unconsciousness imagi- 
nable, go wandering about among the clanging 
and clashing from the tents, the beer-drinking, the 
shouts and rollicking laughter, and find it all a 
very elysium. Their happiness is as solid as they 
themselves ; and if there are other eyes and ears 
in the world than those with which they drink in 
huge draughts of pleasure as palpably as they 
take their beer from tall foaming tankards, they, 
at least, are oblivious of them. 

But we left it raining heavily, cruelly blighting 
our hopes. A Volksfest with rain is a heartless 
mockery of fate, and a rainy Volksfest, when there 
is a Kaiser to see, unspeakably aggravating. But 



206 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

the obnoxious clouds being in German atmosphere 
naturally knew what etiquette demanded of them, 
and respectively withdrew just as the pealing of 
the Cannstadt bells announced his majesty's ap- 
proach ; and as he and his suite rode into the 
grounds, the sun, who had made up his mind to 
have a day of retirement and was in consequence 
a little sulky about appearing, had the courtier- 
like grace to try to assume a tolerably genial 
expression, since he had burst unwillingly into 
the imperial presence. 

The pavilion for the people of the court was 
filled with ladies in brilliant toilets, with their 
attendant cavaliers, as the glittering train rode 
towards it ; the city guard in front, according to an 
old custom, then the Kaiser and king side by side, 
and, after them, all the princes and grand dukes, 
etc., whom we have had the honor of mentioning 
more than once of late, and of seeing them often 
enough to look at them critically and search for 
our individual favorites as they gallantly gallop 
by. The enthusiasm of the multitude was im- 
mense, and the shouting proved that peasants' 
lungs are powerful organs. 

After the horsemen came a line of open car- 
riages, in the first of which was the empress and 
her majesty Queen Olga; the latter looking, as 
usual, pale, stately, gracious, and truly a queen. 
Princess Vera, the Grand Duchess of Baden, and 
other ladies followed, and they all went into the 
pavilion, while the Kaiser and king rode about 
among the people, looking at models, machinery, 
animals, — and being scrutinized themselves from 



THE CANNSTADT VOLKSFEST. 207 

the top of their helmets to their spurs, it is need- 
less to say. 

Upon joining the ladies the crown prince took 
off his helmet, kissed the queen's hand, then his 
mother's, which amiable gallantry we viewed with 
deep appreciation and interest. The next thing 
to see was the prize animals, which were led over 
the course past the pavilion, wearing wreaths of 
flowers. Some vicious-looking bulls, their horns 
and feet tied with strong ropes, and led by six 
men, regarded the scarlet of the officers' uniforms 
very doubtfully, as if they had half a mind to 
make a rush at it, ropes or no ropes. There were 
pretty, white cows, who wore their floral honors 
with a mild, bovine grace : and sheep with ribbons 
floating from their tails, and a coquettish rose or 
two over their brows, were attractive objects ; but 
2>ig perversity and ugliness so adorned was too 
absurd. 

The event of the day was the " gentlemen's 
races," as they are called, being under the direc- 
tion of a club, of which the Prince of Weimar is 
president, and Prince Wilhelm a member. They 
were interesting, and the whole picture gay and 
pleasing, — the flying horses, with their jockeys in 
scarlet, yellow, and blue silk blouses ; the pavilion 
full of bright colors, the hundreds of banners wav- 
ing in the breeze ; beyond the grounds, pretty 
groves, and the little Gothic church at Berg, well 
up on the hill : but, as the Shah of Persia said 
when they wanted to have some races in his honor 
at Berlin, " Really, it is n't necessary. I already 
know that one horse runs faster than another." 



208 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

There were two structures there which deserve 
special notice. When I tell you that they were 
composed of ears of corn, apples, onions, etc., you 
will never imagine how artistic w T as the result, 
and I quite despair of conveying an idea of their 
beauty. One was the music-stand, having on the 
first floor an exhibition of prize fruits ; above, 
the military bands from the Uhlan and dragoon 
regiments; yet higher, a platform with tall sheaves 
of wheat in the corners, and in the centre, upon 
a large base, a column sixty feet high, perhaps, 
bearing on its summit a statue of Concordia. 
But the walls of tins little temple, and the lofty 
column too, were all of vegetables, arranged with 
consummate skill on a firm background of wood 
covered with evergreen. Imagine, if you can, a 
kind of mosaic, with arabesques in bright colors ; 
sometimes a solid white background of onions, 
with intricate scrolls and waving lines of deep- 
red apples, seemingly exactly of a size, ingeniously 
designed and perfectly executed. It w 7 as quite 
wonderful to observe how firm and compact and 
precise this vegetable architecture was: and surpris- 
ing enough to discover old friends of the kitchen- 
garden looking at us proudly from this thing of 
beauty. Golden traceries of corn, elaborate figures 
in cranberries, aesthetic turnips and idealized beets, 
— all the products of Wurtemberg soil, in fact, — 
utilized in a masterly way, and all as firm and 
sharp in outline as if carved out of stone. A 
broad triumphal arch fashioned in the same w T ay 
was quite as much of a marvel, and most effective 
as one of the gates of entrance. 



THE CANNSTADT VOLKSFEST. 209 

After the races the Kaiser rode away in an open 
carriage with the king, and that was the last we 
saw of this attractive old gentleman, with his 
genial, kindly, honest face, and simple, soldierly 
ways, — in his freshness and strength certainly 
a wonderful old man, whatever newspapers and 
political writers may say of him. They say his 
private life is simple in the extreme ; that his 
library is only a collection of military works ; that 
he carefully keeps everything that is ever given 
him, even sugar rabbits that the children in the 
family give him at Easter. It is said that once, in 
Alsace, in the midst of the excitement over him 
and the celebration, he noticed a little boy all alone 
in the streets crying bitterly, and called to him. 
" What 's the matter, little man ? " said the Kaiser. 

" Matter enough," replies the exasperated child. 
" This confounded emperor is the matter. They 're 
making such a fuss about him, my ma 's gone and 
forgotten my birthday." The next day the boy 
received a portrait of the Kaiser, richly framed, 
with the inscription, — 

" From the Emperor of Germany to the little 
boy who lost his birthday." 

After the line of carriages drove off, the caval- 
cade formed again, led this time by the crown 
prince and the Grand Duke of Baden; and they 
galloped over the course and out of the west gate 
in a very spirited way, to the great delight of the 
people, who shouted and cheered most frantically. 
Is anybody weary of hearing about these distin- 
guished riders] We are a little tired of them 
ourselves, it must be confessed, goodly sights 



210 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

though they be. But now they are quite gone, 
and the last remembrance we have of them is the 
fall of their horses' hoofs, the glittering of metal, 
and the waving of plumes as they swept through 
the pretty arched gateway, stately and effective to 
the last. 

The rollicking spirit of the Volksfest at even- 
ing, stimulated by unlimited beer, was a wonderful 
thing to observe. We stayed to see it by lantern- 
light, in order to be intimately acquainted with its 
merriest phases, and the noise of it rings in our 
ears yet, though now the Feat is quite over, the 
Yolks are gone to their homes, the hurly-burly 'a 
done. 




IN A VINEYARD. 




UR milkwoman is a person of importance 
in her village. This we did not know till 
recently, though we were quite aware of 
onr good fortune in getting excellent milk 
and rich cream daily ; and we had had occasion to 
admire her rosy cheeks and broad, solid row of 
white teeth, — in fact, had already laid a founda- 
tion of respect for her, upon which a recent event 
has induced us to bnild largely. A very comely, 
honest woman we always thought her ; but when 
she came smilingly one morning, and invited us, 
one and all, out to her vineyards, to eat as many 
grapes as we could, to help gather them if we 
wished, to see her Mann and all her family, and 
to investigate the subject of wine-making, we were 
unanimously convinced her equal was not to be 
found in any village in Wiirtemberg, and the invi- 
tation was accepted w T ith enthusiastic acclama- 
tions. 

We were much edified to learn that the condi- 
tion of things demanded a certain etiquette. We 
were to visit people of inferior station, we were 
told, and, in return for their hospitality, must take 
unto them gifts: The idea struck us, of course, 



212 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

as highly commendable, and we declared ourselves 
ready to do the correct thing. But we were quite 
aghast to learn that a large sausage should be 
offered to our hostess, — in fact, that this object 
would be expected by her ; that it actually was 
lurking behind the pretty invitation to come to 
see her under her own vine and fig-tree. A sud- 
den silence fell upon our little party at the break- 
fast-table. It really did seem as if something else 
might more fitly express our grateful appreciation 
and kind wishes. 

One little lady spoke : — 

" A horrid sausage ! Why can't we take some- 
thing nice, — cold tongue, and chocolate-cakes with 
cream in them, for instance 1 " 

" 0, yes, </o," says our German friend, with a 
sardonic expression. " By all means give our 
Suabian peasants chocolate-cakes ; but then what 
will they have to eat ? " she demands, grimly. 

11 Why, chocolate-cakes, to be sure," says Miss 
Innocence. With a withering air of half-con- 
cealed contempt, the very clever German girl en- 
deavors to present to the mind of the little lady 
from New York — who lives chiefly on sweets — 
the reasons why chocolate-cake and the Suabian 
peasant are, so to speak, incompatible. Among 
other things, she remarked that he could devour a 
dozen cakes and be quite unaware that he had 
eaten anything; that his hard-working day must 
be sustained by something solid ; that the sausage 
was a support, a solace, a true and tried friend; 
and, last and strongest argument, he liked sausage 
better than anything else in the world. 



IN A VINEYARD. 213 

We felt disturbed. There was a great disap- 
pointing discrepancy somewhere. Going out to 
the vineyards, even in anticipation, had a ring of 
poetry in it, while sausage — is sausage the world 
over. Nevertheless, to the sausage we succumbed, 
and a hideous one, as long as your arm and as big, 
was a carefully guarded member of our party to 
the vineyard the next day. Fireworks, too, we 
carried, — why, you will see later ; and so, dona 
ferentes, we went out to Untertiirkheim by rail, a 
ride of fifteen minutes from Stuttgart. 

The smile, teeth, and cheeks of our hostess were 
visible from afar as we drew near the station. She 
beamed on us warmly, and led us in triumph 
through the village, which was everywhere a busy, 
pretty scene ; long yellow strings of ears of corn 
hanging out to dry on nearly every house, and the 
narrow streets full of the unwonted bustle incident 
to the vintage-time. 

Great vats of grape-juice ; wine-presses in active 
operation, some of which were sensible, improved, 
modern-looking things, some primitive as can be 
imagined ; the well-to-do people using the modern 
improvements, while their humbler neighbors em- 
ployed small boys, who danced a perpetual jig in 
broad, low tubs placed above the large vats that 
received the juice. We ascended the little lad- 
ders at the side of the vats, to satisfy ourselves 
as to the kind of feet with which the grapes were 
being pressed, "the bare white feet of laughing 
girls" being, of course, the picture before our 
mind's eye. What we actually saw was, in some 
cases, a special kind of wooden shoe, and in others 



214 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

ordinary, well-worn 'leather boots ! These solemn 
small boys in tubs, their heads and shoulders bob- 
bing up and down before our e} T es as they ener- 
getically stamped and jumped and crushed the 
yielding mass, tilled us with such utter amazement 
at the time that we forgot to laugh, but they are 
now an irresistibly comical remembrance. Their 
intense gravity was remarkable. It would seem 
as if the ordinary small boy, who can legitimately 
jump upon anything until all the life is crushed 
out of it, ought to be happy. Perhaps these were, 
with a happiness too deep for smiles. And per- 
haps — which is more likely — it Mas hard work, 
and they realized it meant business for their papas, 
and they must spring and jump with zeal, and 
there was no play in the matter. One child of 
ten or so had such a dignified, important air, as he 
stood at the side of his tub, into which his father 
was pouring grapes ! He looked like an artist 
conscious of power waiting for his time, knowing 
that immense results would depend upon his 
antics. Let me mention with pride that our 
milkwoman's Mann owns the largest press in the 
place, and her stalwart, pinky brother works it. 
So pink a mortal never was seen. He exhibited 
the mechanism of the press with tolerable clear- 
ness, though seriously incommoded by blushes. 
We thought he would vanish in a flame before 
our eyes. But, observing he grew pinker each 
time we addressed him, we wickedly prolonged the 
interview as long as possible. 

Then up the hill we went, through narrow, steep 
paths, with vineyards on every side of us, in which 



IN A VINEYARD. 215 

men, women, and children were working busily. 
We met constantly long files of young men and 
maidens, carrying great baskets of grapes down to 
the village, all of whom gave us a cheery Griiss Gott. 
We found the whole family in the vineyard 
working away busily, filling the huge, long, narrow 
baskets, which the men carry on their backs by a 
strap over the shoulders. They welcomed us cor- 
dially, and bade us eat as many grapes as we could, 
which we all with one accord, with great earnest- 
ness and simplicity, did. If you have never eaten 
grapes in a vineyard, perhaps you don't know how 
fastidious and dainty you become, how you take 
one grape here, one there, select the finest from a 
cluster, then toss the remainder into the basket. 
Deliciously cool and fresh, with a wonderful bloom 
on them, were they, and, together with the crisp 
autumn air, the busy bare-headed peasants work- 
ing in all the vineyards as far as we could see, 
Untertiirkheim lying under the hill, and the little 
bridge across the narrow Neckar, they filled us 
with an innocent sort of intoxication. The brill- 
iant Malagas with a touch of flame on them in the 
sunlight, white ones beyond, and rich black-purple 
clusters, lured us on. If the amount consumed 
by the foreign invaders during the first half-hour 
could be computed, it would seem a fabulous 
quantity to mention. We would indeed prefer to 
let it remain in uncertainty, one of those inter- 
esting unsolved historical problems about which 
great minds differ. But it was not in the least 
matter-of-fact eating ; on the contrary, a most 
refined and elevated feasting upon fruits fit for 
the gods. 



915 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

And then we worked, with an energy that won 
for ns the goodman's wondering admiration, until 
every grape was gathered. Never before had the 
vines been cleared so fast, said our grateful host. 
From above and below and everywhere around 
came the sound of pistols and fireworks, each dem- 
onstration indicating that some one had gathered 
all his grapes. Now was the fitting moment for 
the presentation of the sausage, which was grace- 
fully transferred from the nook where it was blush- 
ing unseen to the hands of our host, and was gra- 
ciously, even tenderly, received. After which we 
devoted ourselves to pyrotechnic pursuits, and, this 
being a novel experience, we all burned our fin- 
gers, and nearly destroyed our friend the pinky 
man by directing, unwittingly, a fiery serpent 
quite in his face. 

Then down, down over the hill through the 
thread-like paths between the vineyards, through 
the village in the twilight, where every one is still 
busy and the small boys still dancing away for 
dear life, suggesting — like Ichabod Crane, was it 
not 1 ? — "that blessed patron of the dance, St. 
Vitus," and past the great fountain, with the 
statue of the Turk grimly rising above half a 
dozen girls, slowly filling their buckets (you 
will never know what wise remarks on the " situa- 
tion" that Turk occasioned), we sauntered along 
to the station, and presently the train whisked us 
away from the village and the gloaming and the 
pretty autumn scene, so real, so merry, so inno- 
cent, so healthy, and picturesque. Night and 
the city lights succeeded the twilight in the vil- 
lage. Our hearts bore pleasant memories and 



IN A VINEYARD. 217 

our bands baskets of grapes, given us at the last 
moment by that excellent and most sagacious 
person, our milkvvoman. 

We hope we were not straying from the true 
fold, but certainly our views on the temperance, 
or rather the total-abstinence, question were quite 
lax as we returned to Stuttgart that evening. 
The water in Germany is often so unpleasant and 
impure one learns to regard it as an undesirable, 
not to say noxious and immoral beverage, while 
the light native wines in contrast seem as innocent 
as water ought to be. And what is the strictest 
teetotaler to do when positively ordered by the 
best physicians not to drink the water here, under 
penalty of serious consequences in the shape of a 
variety of disorders'? American school-girls, who 
persist in taking water because the home habit is 
too strong to be at once broken off, have an amus- 
ing way of examining their pretty throats from 
time to time to see if they are beginning to en- 
large, for the goitre is hinted at (whether with 
reason or not I do not know) as one of the possi- 
ble evil effects of continued water-drinking in 
South Germany. It would seem that even the 
Crusaders would here yield to the stern facts, and 
at least color the water with the juice of the 
grapes that grow in their beauty on the hillsides 
everywhere around. And certainly we may be 
pardoned for taking an extraordinary interest in 
this year's vintage ; for have we not toiled with 
our own hands in the vineyards on the Neckar's 
banks, did we not see with our own eyes those 
boots, and is it not now the fitting time for the 
spirit of 76 to make our hearts glad] 



AMONG FREILIGRATH'S BOOKS. 




POET'S study, when he has lain in his 
grave but one short year, and the char- 
acter and peculiarities which his presence 
gave to his surroundings are yet undis- 
turbed, is a sacred spot. In light mood, ready to 
be agreeably entertained, we went out to pleasant 
Cannstadt to see Freiligrath's books, and even in 
crossing the threshold of his library the careless 
words died on our lips, so strong a personality 
has the room, so heavy was the atmosphere with 
associations and memories of a man who had lived 
and loved and toiled and suffered. 

How much rooms have to say for themselves, 
indeed ! How they catch tricks and ways from 
their occupants ! How faultily faultless and re- 
pellent are some, how strangely some charm us 
and appeal to us ! This room of Freiligrath's 
speaks in touching little ways of the man who 
lived there and loved it, as plainly as a young 
girl's room tells a sweet, innocent story while the 
breeze moves its snowy curtains, beneath which in 
his golden cage a canary trills, and the sunshine 
steals in on the low chair, the bit of unfinished 
work, the handful of violets in a glass, the book 



AMONG FREILIGRATirS BOOKS. 219 

opened at a favorite poem. The girl is gone, but 
the room is as warm from her presence as the 
glove that has just been drawn from her hand. 
Freiligrath sleeps in the Cannstadt Friedhof, 
where for a thousand years the sturdy little 
church, with its red roof and square tower, has 
watched by the silent ones ; but his chair is drawn 
up by the great study-table, the familiar things 
he loved are as he left them, and his presence is 
missed even by them who knew him not. It is, 
perhaps, this air of having been touched by a lov- 
ing hand, that impresses one especially in the ar- 
rangements here, — a corner room, looking north 
and east, having two windows, through which air 
and sunshine freely come, and from which the poet 
used to gaze upon a landscape lovely as a dream ; 
far extended, tranquil, idyllic, in the distance, the 
Suabian Alps, rising against the horizon beyond 
long, soft slopes of fertile lands crowned by vine- 
yards, and broad, sunny meadows intersected by 
lines of the martial poplar ; a glimpse of the 
lovely, wooded heights of the park of the " Wil- 
helma," that "stately pleasure dome," which King 
Wilhelm of Wiirtemberg decreed, and the Neckar 
close by, rushing over its dam, and sweeping 
beneath the picturesque stone bridge with its 
fine arches, and flowing on past the old mill and 
quaint gables of Cannstadt to meet the distant 
Rhine. How Freiligrath must have loved the 
sound of the water that sang to him ever, night 
and day, not loud but continuously, soothing him 
as a cradle-song soothes a weary child, in these 
latter years at quiet Cannstadt after his life-strug- 



220 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

gles, and fever, and pain ! They say he loved it 
well, and that he would often rise from his work 
and stand long by the window, looking out on the 
singing water and the peaceful landscape, watch- 
ing it as we watch a loved face that has for us a 
new, tender grace with every moment. 

The room does not look like the abode of a soli- 
tary man. The easy- chairs seem accustomed to 
he drawn near one another for a cosy chat between 
friends, and the expression of all things is genial, 
gemiithlich. Not a bookworm, not simply a great 
intellect lost in his own pursuits, forgetting the 
world outside, but a strong, warm heart throbbing 
for humanity, must have been the genius of a room 
like this. 

Under his table lies a deerskin rug, a trophy of 
his son Wolfgang's prowess in the chase. On the 
walls are pictures of different sizes, irregularly 
hung in irregular places, and each one seems to 
say, " I was selected from all others of my kind 
because Freiligrath loved me." They are mostly 
heads of his favorite authors and poets, small pic- 
tures as a rule, — the one of Schiller sitting by the 
open vine-clad window, — Goethe, Heine, Uhland, 
and many more of the chief poets of Germany ; 
Byron, several of Longfellow and the Howitts 
(dear friends of Freiligrath), Burns, Burns's sons 
and the Burns Cottage, Goldsmith, Carlyle, Jean 
Paul; a small colored picture of Walter Scott 
bending his gentle face over his writing in front 
of a great stained-glass window in the armory at 
Abbotsford ; a cast of the Shakespeare mask ; 
a few scenes from Soest, a picturesque old town, 



AMONG FREILIGRATH S BOOKS. 991 

where Freiligrath was, when a boy, apprenticed to 
a merchant ; a lock of Schiller's hair, — quite red, 
— with an autograph letter ; a lock of Goethe's 
hair, which is dusky brown, with letters, and an 
unpublished verse written for a lottery at a fair in 
Weimar : — 

" Manches herrliche der Welt 
1st iii Krieg und Streit zerronnen ; 
Wer beschiitzet und erhalt 
Hat das schonste Loos gewonnen." 

Goethe. 
Weimar, d. 3 Sept. 1826. 

Madame Freiligrath was Ida Melos, daughter of 
Professor Melos of Weimar, and when a child was 
an especial pet of Goethe. She and her sister tell 
many pleasant anecdotes of their life there, and 
of their playfellows, Goethe's grandchildren, with 
whom they have always been on terms of close in- 
timacy; and of Goethe as a beautiful old man, 
smiling and throwing bonbons from his window to 
the group of children at play in the garden below. 
Mrs. Freiligrath told us she was a tall, mature 
girl, with a wise, grave look far beyond her years, 
and they always made her enact Mignon in the 
tableaux vivants. She was so young she did not 
know what it was all about, but she " remembers 
she liked wearing the wings." Two gentlewomen, 
speaking with a tender sadness of their long, event- 
ful lives, telling us of associations with some of the 
leading spirits of the age, charming in their stories 
of the past, appreciative of all that is best in the 
latest literature, they harmonize well with the 
quiet old house whore they graciously dispense 
their hospitality. 



222 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

Gently and gravely they showed us the treas- 
ures of the library, which probably during the 
spring will come under the auctioneer's hammer, 
and be scattered through the world. Seeing it 
in its completeness, — seven or eight thousand 
volumes amassed through the skill and patience 
of a true book-lover, who allowed himself in his 
frugal life the one luxury of a rich binding now 
and then, and who had a perfect genius for dis- 
covering rare old books hidden away in dusty odd 
corners in London bookshops, being, in this re- 
spect, as his friend Wallesrode says, in a recent 
article in "Ueber Land und Meer," a real " Sunday 
child," — one must regret it cannot be preserved 
intact, and given as a Freiligrath memorial to some 
college. 

There are first editions here, which on account 
of their rareness could command from connoisseurs 
their weight in gold : Schiller's " Robbers," Frank- 
fort and Leipsic, 1781, first edition; the second 
edition, 1782, and many other early editions of 
Schiller's works, small, rough, curious-looking, 
precious books : also, first edition Goethe's " Gota 
von Berlichingen," 1773; " Werther," Leipsic, 
1774. The German and English classics stand in 
noble, stately rows, with much of value in Italian, 
French, and Spanish. The English collection is 
especially rich, however. There is a " Hudibras," 
first edition, 1662; " Rasselas," first edition; a 
"Don Quixote" with Thackeray's autograph on 
the fly-leaf, written in Trinity College ; and there 
are " Elzevirs" of 1640 - 47. The ballads, legends, 
Eastern fairy-tales, and imaginative lore are very 



AMONG FREILIGRATirS BOOKS. 223 

attractive. There is a fine selection of works on 
German, French, English, Scotch, and Irish dia- 
lects, in all of which Freiligrath was extremely 
proficient. How many "Miltons" there are I do 
not dare say, and the number is not important, 
since this does not pretend to be an inventory ; 
but there was a whole shelf of them, from the first 
edition on. 

On the library-table lay superb volumes, bound 
in richest calf, — Beaumont and Fletcher, London, 
1679, in folio; Ben Jonson, 1631, folio; Spenser, 
1611; Shakespeare, the rare folio of 1685, and 
many other valuable Shakespeares. If only some 
one who knows how to love them will buy these 
books ! It seems like sacrilege to imagine them 
in the hands of the unworthy or careless. 

One could spend days, years, in that quiet room, 
with its subtle influences and suggestions, sur- 
rounded by old friends on the shelves, and by 
books that look as if they would deign to open 
their hearts to us and become our friends also. 
And there must one ponder long upon the varied 
life of the poet and patriot, — how Fate was al- 
ways putting fetters on his Pegasus, binding him 
as an apprentice as a boy in Soest, later making 
him a clerk in a banking-house in Amsterdam, 
and forcing him again to write at a clerk's desk in 
London ; and how, nevertheless, he sang himself, 
as some one says of him, into the hearts of the 
German people. They say he was so loved, and his 
face so well known through his photographs, that 
often, upon going through a town where he per- 
sonally was unknown, the school-children in the 



224 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

streets would recognize him, and instantly begin 
to sing poems of his that were set to music- and 
sung everywhere throughout Germany, particu- 
larly the well-known 

0, lieb, so lang du lieben kannst ! 
" 0, love, while love is left to thee ! " 

It is said, too, that once on a steamer, during 
the Franco-Prussian war, a woman came up to him 
and suddenly put her arms round his neck and 
kissed him. "That's for Wolfgang in the field," 
said she, having a son herself at the front. 

And after his struggles for freedom, the perse- 
cution he endured because of his political princi- 
ples and his immense influence upon the people, 
after his flight into England and long exile, he 
came back finally, honored and revered, to his 
native land, and spent his last years in this peace- 
ful abode. He breathed his last, like Goethe, 
sitting in his chair. The Neckar still sang on, 
outside the vine-clad window. Within, the poet's 
voice was hushed forever. 





THREE FUNERALS. 

IHREE funeral processions which have 
I lately moved through Stuttgart streets 
have awakened, on account of peculiar 
associations connected with each, more 
attention and interest, more feeling I might per- 
haps say, than we selfish beings usually accord to 
these mournful black trains that mean other peo- 
ple's sorrows. 

Of these three, the first was the train that bore 
the Herzog Eugen of Wiirtemberg to his last rest- 
ing-place. Young, popular, after Prinz Wilhelm 
presumptive heir to the throne ; the husband of 
the Princess Vera, — who is the niece and adopted 
daughter of the queen, and according to report a 
very lovable person, — he had apparently enough to 
make life sweet at the moment he was called from 
it. Recently he went to Diisseldorf to take com- 
mand of a regiment there. The Princess Vera 
remained at the Residenz in Stuttgart, but was 
intending to join him immediately. A slight cold 
neglected, — a rich banquet followed by night-air, 
— and suddenly all was over. He died after an 
illness of a day or two, while the princess, sum- 
moned by a telegram, was on the train half-way 
between Stuttgart and Diisseldorf. 

The air is full of fables, and the common people 



226 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

" make great eyes" when they speak of the poor 
duke, and dark hints of foul play, poison, enemies, 
cabals, perfidy, delight all good souls with a taste 
for the sensational. They, however, who have the 
slightest ground for knowing anything about the 
matter, and, indeed, all rational people, declare it 
was simply a cold, inflammation, congestion, such 
as makes havoc among frail mortal flesh, and never 
draws any distinction in favor of blood royal. 

After the ceremonies at Dusseldorf came the 
solemn reception of the remains here. Early in 
the evening the streets were thronged with an 
immense but quiet, patiently waiting crowd, and, 
along the line where the procession was to pass, 
burning tar cast a fitful light over the mass of 
people.: and the flickering flames, fanned by the 
night breeze, now would illumine the Residenz 
and Schloss Platz and the fine outline of the "Old 
Palace," in the chapel of which the duke was to 
lie ; now, subsiding, would leave the scene in half 
gloom. The slow, sad voice of the dirge an- 
nounced the approach of the procession, the whole 
effect of which was intensely solemn and impress- 
ive. Outriders with flickering torches, the escort 
of cavalry, Uhlans of the Wiirtemberg regiment in 
which he had served, floating streamers of black 
and white, the hearse drawn by coal-black horses, 
slowly passing, with the loud ringing of all the 
bells, made one hold one's breath as the black fig- 
ures went by in the lurid light. The inevitable 
hour had, indeed, awaited him, and snatched him 
from his worldly honors aud family affection, and 
" der edle Hitter," in spite of all the " boast of her- 



THREE FUNERALS. 227 

aldry and pomp of power" that so lately had sur- 
rounded him, lay silent and cold, while the flames 
burned strong and warm and the loud bells 
clanged, and he rode slowly on to the chapel in 
the old castle, beneath which he now rests with 
others of his race. 

This is not the first sad, stately night-procession 
that has occurred here. Wilhelm, father of the 
present king, was a strong, original nature, averse 
to form, and gave strict orders concerning his own 
burial. They were to bury him on a hill, some 
miles from the city, between midnight and dawn, 
and simply fire one gun over him, he had said. 
His son, however, while observing his wishes as to 
time and place of burial, took care that the state 
and dignity of the procession should befit royalty 
dethroned by death. At midnight the train left 
the palace, and, with its long line of nobles, cava- 
liers, and soldiers, swept slowly out of the city amid 
the constant ringing of bells and booming of can- 
non, and wound through the soft summer night 
along the Neckar's banks, over the bridge at Cann- 
stadt, while great fires blazed on every hill-top, and 
the old king, in the majesty of death, was borne 
on, past the fair vineyards and soft fertile slopes of 
the land he had loved so well, to the Rothenberg, 
on the summit of which they laid him to rest and 
fired one gun just as the morning star dropped 
below the horizon. 

" And had he not high honor? 
The hillside for his pall, 
To lie in state while angels wait 
With stars for tapers tall, 
And the dark rock-pines, like tossing plumes, 
Over his bier to wave — ." 



228 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

Certainly, nothing less than the "Burial of 
Moses " can have been so grand as this last dark 
ride of the strong old king ! We behold the train 
in its magnificent gloom winding along the Neckar 
and up the vine-clad hillside, so often as we see its 
route, after nightfall. Dusky, stately forms ride 
by, and the wail of the dirge sounds on the even- 
ing breeze. Why may we not all be laid at rest 
at night 1 ? Sunlight is cruel to eyes blinded by 
tears, and glaring day hurts grieved hearts. The 
Night is so solemn and tender, why may she not 
help us bury our dead 1 

The next procession that we saw with earnest 
eyes, after the Duke Eugen's, was that of a stu- 
dent of the Polytechnic School, who died from the 
effects of a sword-wound. There was no anger, no 
provocation, nothing which according to the student 
code might perhaps soften the memory of the deed. 
It was simply a trial of skill with the Degen, a 
slender, murderous-looking sword. Both were ex- 
pert fencers. The presence of friends incited them 
to do their best. Their pride was roused ; neither 
would yield, and in the excitement one received a 
cut in the head, from the effects of which he died 
in a few days. He was a promising scholar and a 
favorite with the students, and the affair seems 
very shocking in the cruel uselessness of such a 
death, though the more bitter fate of course is 
his who unwittingly did the deed and must live 
with the memory of it in his heart. 

These student funerals occur now and then. 
We have had three or four this winter. Our 
countrymen, not sympathizing with student ways 



THREE FUNERALS. 229 

and student traditions, are sometimes apt to call 
such spectacles "comedies," but to us the comic 
element has never been apparent. First come 
the musicians, playing a dirge, — on this last 
occasion a funeral march from Beethoven. Near 
the hearse walk the students of the corps of 
which the deceased had been a member. They 
wear their most elegant uniform, — black velvet 
blouses or jackets, buff knee-breeches, high boots, 
the cap and sash of the color which distinguishes 
the corps, long buff gauntlets, and swords, — alto- 
gether quite striking. On the draped coffin are 
the dead student's cap, sash, and sword. The 
other corps walk behind, the professors also, and 
friends. 

The last funeral of the three was hardly grand 
enough to be called a procession. It was only 
a few carriages winding slowly out to the new 
Friedkof. A touching little story preceded it, per- 
haps not uncommon, yet, to those who watched 
its close, invested with a peculiar pathos. A 
young American girl came here last fall, with high 
hopes and unbounded energy and courage. She 
was in the art-school, and it may be her eager 
spirit forgot that bodies too must be cared for, and 
it may be that her naturally frail constitution had 
been weakened by overwork before she came ; but 
at all events a cold, which she ignored in her zeal 
and devotion to her studies, led to an illness from 
which she never recovered. She was entirely 
alone and unknown, and at first no one except 
the people in her pension knew of her sickness. 
Patient, uncomplaining, and reserved, she bore 



230 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

whatever came, and was finally taken, as she grew 
worse, to a hospital, where she could command 
better and more exclusive care. As the facts be- 
came known in the American colony, she was 
ministered to most tenderly, and flowers and deli- 
cacies of every description were sent daily to her 
little room at the Olga Heil Anstalt. Indeed, the 
good sister who nursed her there found it difficult 
to guard her from the visits and kindly proffered 
administrations of newly made friends, who came 
full of tender sympathy for the lonely girl. Of her 
loneliness she never made complaint. When asked 
by our consul why she had not at once sent for him 
when she was first ill, she replied, smilingly, " Be- 
cause I knew you had quite enough to do without 
taking care of me." In fact, she sent for no one, 
and only through accident did the English clergy- 
man and the consul hear of her case. And, lying 
in her bare room in a foreign hospital, hearing only 
the foreign tongue of which she was not yet mis- 
tress, and at best, when her countrywomen came 
to cheer her, seeing only new faces, instead of her 
own home-people, her brave, bright smile was al- 
ways ready to greet the visitor, even when she 
was too languid to utter a word. Her one con- 
fessed regret was that her illness took her from 
her art-studies ; and her eyes would beam with 
delight when a fellow-student in the art-school 
would speak of it, of the professors, and the work 
there. Her whole enthusiastic soul was absorbed 
in this theme, so that her suffering seemed, to her, 
of no account in comparison with her high aims 
and ideal. Utterly single-hearted, she lay there, 



TIIR EEF UNERALS. 231 

brave and uncomplaining to the last, and seemed 
the only one unconscious of the pathos of her 
position. Her thoughts were so given to the 
beautiful pictures she longed to make, and to the 
beautiful pictures others had made, she had none at 
all left for the poor girl dying alone in a strange 
land, who was filling so many eyes with tears 
and so many hearts with pain. She faded away 
very gently, and, for a long time before her death, 
suffered more from extreme languor than from 
acute distress. After it was all over, there was 
a little, solemn service in the hospital chapel, at- 
tended by the many who had interested them- 
selves for her, and some of the professors and 
pupils of the Kunst Schule, who added their ex- 
quisite wreaths to the lovely flowers about her. 
And then she was taken to the new Friedhof and 
laid beneath the pavement of the Arcade, while 
a little band of wanderers stood by — united, 
many of them, only through their sympathy with 
her who was gone — and listened to the solemn 
words of the English service, and looked thought- 
fully out through the arches upon a tender gray 
sky, a wide expanse of land — now almost an un- 
broken surface, but one day to be filled with 
graves — and off upon the hills rising softly be- 
yond ; and the last violets and tuberoses were 
strewn upon her resting-place, and the little band 
separated, each going his way, but in many hearts 
was a tender memory for the young girl whose 
brief story was just ended, — a sad thought for 
her who never seemed sad for herself. 



SOME CHRISTMAS PICTURES. 




FEW days before Christmas the three 
kings from the Orient came stealing up 
our stairs in the gloaming. They wore 
cheap white cotton raiment over their or- 
dinary work-a-day clothes, and gilt-paper crowns on 
their heads. They were small, thin kings. Mel- 
chior's crown was awry, Kaspar felt very timid, and 
was continually stumbling over his train ; but Bal- 
thazar was brave as a lion, and nudged his royal 
brothers, — one of whom was a girl, by the way, — 
putting courage into them with his elbows ; and 
the dear little souls sang their songs and got their 
pennies, and their white robes vanished in the twi- 
light as their majesties trudged on towards the 
next house. There they would again stand in an 
uncertain, tremulous row, and sing more or sing 
less, according to the reception they met with, and 
put more or less pennies — generally less, poor 
dears ! — into their pockets. Poor, dear, shabby 
little wise men, — including the one who was a girl, 
— you were potentates whom it was a pleasure to 
see, and we trust you earned such an affluence of 
Christmas pennies that you were in a state of in- 
effable bliss when, at last, freed from the restraint 



SOME CHRISTMAS PICTURES. 233 

of crowns and royal robes, you stood in your poor 
home before your Christmas-tree. It may have 
been a barren thing, but to your happy child-eyes 
no doubt it shone as the morning star and blos- 
somed as the rose. 

Other apparitions foretelling the approach of 
Christmas visited us. One was an old woman 
with cakes. Her prominent characteristic is stay- 
ing where she is put, or rather where she puts her- 
self, which is usually where she is not wanted. 
Buy a cake of this amiable old person, whose 
breath (with all the respect due to age let it be 
said) smells unquestionably of schnapps, and she 
will bless you with astounding volubility. Her 
tongue whirls like a mill-wheel as she tearfully 
assures us, " God will reward us," — ■ and how she 
stays ! Men may come and men may go, but the 
old woman is still there, blessing away indefati- 
gably. She must possess, to a remarkable degree, 
those clinging qualities men praise in woman. In- 
deed, her tendrils twine all over the house ; and 
when, through deep plots against a dear friend, w T e 
manage to lead her out of our own apartment, it is 
not long before, through our dear friend's counter- 
plots, the old woman stands again in our doorway 
with her great basket on her head, smiling and 
weeping and bobbing and blessing as she offers her 
wares. Queer old woman, rare old plant ! — though 
}'ou cannot be said to beautify, yet, twining and 
clinging and staying forever like the ivy-green, you 
were not so attractive as the little shadowy kings, 
but you, too, heralded Christmas ; and may you 
have had a comfortable time somewhere with sau- 



234 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

sage and whatever is nearest your heart in these 
your latter days ! That she is not a poetical figure 
in the Christinas picture is neither her fault nor 
mine. She may, ages ago, have had a thrilling 
story, now completely drowned in schnapps, but 
that she exists, and sells cakes according to the 
manner described, is all we ever shall know of her. 
Then the cakes themselves — " genuine Nurem- 
bergers," she called them — were strange things to 
behold. Solid and brown, of manifold shapes and 
sizes, wrapped in silver-paper, they looked im- 
penetrable and mysterious. The friends in coun- 
cil each seized a huge round one with an air as of 
sailing off on a voyage of discovery, or of storming 
a fortress, and nibbled away at it. As a massive 
whole it was strange and foreign, but familiar 
things were gradually evolved. There was now 
and then a trace of honey, a bit of an almond, a 
slice of citron, a flavor of vanilla, a soupeon of 
orange. 

Gazing out from behind her cake, one young 
woman remarks, seutentiously, — 
" It 's gingerbread with things in it." 
Another stops in her investigations with, — 
" It is as hard as a brownstone front." 
" It 's delightful not to know in the least what 's 
coming next," says another. " I 've just reached 
a stratum of jelly and am going deeper. Fare- 
well." 

" Echt Niirnberger, echt Niirnberger ! " croaked 
the old dame, still nodding, still blessing ; and so, 
meditatively eating her cakes, we gazed at her 
and wondered if any one could possibly be as old 



SOME CHRISTMAS PICTURES. 235 

sis she looked, and if she too were a product of 
" Nuremberg the ancient," to which " quaint old 
town of toil and traffic " we wandered off through 
the medium of Longfellow's poem, as every con- 
scientious American in Europe is in duty bound 
to do. It is always a comfort to go where he 
has led the way. We are sure of experiencing the 
proper emotions. They are gently and quietly 
instilled into us, and we never know they do not 
come of themselves, until we happen to realize 
that some verse of his, familiar to our childhood, 
has been haunting us all the time. What a pity 
he never has written a poetical guide-book ! 

These unusual objects penetrating our quiet 
study hours told us Christmas was coming, and the 
aspect of the Stuttgart streets also proclaimed the 
glad tidings. They were a charming, merry sight. 
The Christmas fair extended its huge length of 
booths and tables through the narrow, quaint 
streets by the old Stiftshirche, reaching even up 
to the Konigstrasse, where great piles of furniture 
rose by the pavements, threatening destruction to 
the passer-by. Thronging about the tables, where 
everything in the world was for sale and all the 
world was buying, could be seen many a dainty 
little lady in a costume fresh from Paris ; many a 
ruddy peasant-girl with braids and bodice, short 
gown and bright stockings ; many types of fea- 
ture, and much confusion of tongues ; and you 
are crowded and jostled : but you like it all, for 
every face wears the happy Christmas look that 
says so much. 

These fairs are curious places, and have a be- 



236 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

numbing effect upon the brain. People come 
home with the most unheard-of purchases, which 
they never seriously intended to buy. Perhaps 
a similar impulse to that which makes one grasp 
a common inkstand in a burning house, and run 
and deposit it far away in a place of safety, leads 
ladies to come from the " Messe " with a wooden 
comb and a string of yellow-glass beads. In both 
cases the intellect is temporarily absent, it would 
seem. Buy you must, of course. What you buy, 
whether it be a white wooden chair, or a child's 
toy, or a broom, or a lace barbe, or a blue-glass 
breastpin, seems to be pure chance. . The country 
people, who come into the city especially to buy, 
know what they want, and no doubt make judicious 
purchases. But we, who go to gaze, to wonder, 
and to be amused, never know why w T e buy any- 
thing, and, when we come home nnd recover our 
senses, look at one another in amazement over our 
motley collections. 

At this last fair a kind fate led ns to a photo- 
graph table, where old French beauties smiled at 
us, and all of Henry the VIII. 's hapless wives 
gazed at us from their ruifs, and the old Greek 
philosophers looked as if they could tell us a thing 
or two if they only would. The discovery of this 
haven in the sea of incongruous things around us 
was a fortunate accident. The photograph-man 
was henceforth our magnet. To him our little 
family, individually and collectively, drifted, and 
day by day the stock of Louise de la Vallieres, 
and Maintenons, and Heloises, and Anne Boleyns, 
and Pompadours, and Sapphos, and Socrates, and 



SOME CHRISTMAS PICTURES. 237 

Diogenes, etc., — (perfect likenesses of all of them, 
I am sure ! ) — increased in our pension, where we 
compared purchases between the courses at dinner, 
and made Archimedes and the duchess of Lam- 
balle stand amicably side by side against the soup- 
tureen. Halcyon, but, alas ! fleeting days, when 
we could buy these desirable works of art for ten 
pfennig, which, I mention with satisfaction, is two 
and one half cents ! 

But, of all the Christmas sights, the Christmas- 
trees and the dolls were the most striking. The 
trees marched about like Birnam Wood coming to 
Dunsinane. There were solid family men going 
off with solid, respectable trees, and servants in 
livery condescending to stalk away with trees of 
the most lofty and aristocratic stature ; and many 
a poor woman dragging along a sickly, stunted 
child with one hand and a sickly, stunted tree 
with the other. 

As to the doll-world into which I have recently 
been permitted to penetrate, all language, even 
aided by a generous use of exclamation-points, 
fails to express its wondrous charm. A doll kin- 
dergarten, with desks and models and blackboards, 
had a competent, amiable, and elderly doll-in- 
structress with spectacles. The younger members 
were occupied with toys and diversions that would 
not fatigue their infant minds, while the older 
ones pored over their books. They had white 
pinafores, flaxen hair, plump cheeks. I think 
they were all alive. 

Then there were dolls who looked as if they lay 
on the sofa all day and read French novels, and 



238 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

dolls that looked as if they were up with the 
birds, hard-working, merry, and wise, — elegant, 
aristocratic countess dolls, with trunks of fine rai- 
ment ; and jolly little peasant dolls, with long yel- 
low braids hanging down their backs, and stout 
shoes, and a general look of having trudged in 
from the Black Forest to see the great city-world 
at Christmas. Such variety of expression, so 
many phases of doll-nature, — for nature they 
have in Germany ! And in front of two especially 
alluring windows, where bright lights streamed 
upon fanciful decorations, toys, and a wonderful 
world of dolls, was always a great group of chil- 
dren. Once, in the early evening, they fairly 
blockaded the pavement and reached far into the 
street, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, not talking much, 
merely devouring those enchanted windows with 
their eager eyes ; some wishing, some not daring 
to wish, but worshipping only, like pale, rapt devo- 
tees. And we others, who labor under the dis- 
advantage of being " grown up," looked at the 
pretty doll-world within the windows and the 
lovely child-world without, and wished that old 
Christmas might bring to each of us the doll we 
want, and never, never let us know that it is 
stuffed with sawdust. 




HAMBURG AGAIN. 




T seems almost like having been in two 
places at once to be able to tell from 
observation a Christmas Tale of Two 
Cities. First there was Stuttgart, where 
the sun was pouring down warm and summerish 
on the hills around the city, and where we were 
borne away on the glad tide that went sweep- 
ing along towards Christmas under the fairest 
skies that ever smiled on saint or sinner in mid- 
winter, until it grew so near the time we almost 
hoard the Christmas bells. And then there was 
Hamburg, to which place — having consigned our- 
selves to the tender mercies of a sleeping coupe — 
we went rushing off through the night, and found 
the dear, glad Christmas just going to happen 
there, too, and the great Northern city seemed 
very noisy and bold and out-in-the-world after 
Stuttgart, nestled so snugly among its hills. 

Hamburg has, however, its quiet spots, if you 
seek them under the great elms in the suburbs, or 
among the quaint streets in the oldest portions of 
the city. One of the very stillest places is a paved 
court by St. George's Church, where the little, old 
houses of one story all look towards three great 



240 ONE YEAR ABROAD. 

crosses in an octagonal enclosure, on which Christ 
and the two thieves hang, and Mary and John 
stand weeping below. It has always been still 
there when we have passed through, though close 
to the busy streets. It is a place with a history, 
I am sure. Indeed, what place is not] But it 
is reticent and knows how to keep its secrets. 
Perhaps Dickens might have made something out 
of the grave, small houses that have been staring 
at the crosses so many long years. 

A very good place for moralizing, too, is down by 
the Elbe, where the great ships from all quarters 
of the earth lie, and you hear Dutch and Dan- 
ish sailors talking, and don't understand a word. 
There commerce seems a mighty thing, and the 
world grows appallingly great, and you feel of as 
much importance in it as the small cat who sits 
meditatively licking her paws down on the tug-boat 
just below you. 

Bat this was to be more or less about Christ- 
mas. Christmas in general is something about 
which there is nothing to say, because it sings its 
own songs without words in all our hearts; but 
a story of one particular Christmas may not be 
amiss here, since it tells of a pretty and graceful 
welcome which Germans knew how to give to a 
wanderer, — a welcome in which tones of tender- 
ness were underlying the merriment, and delicate 
consideration shaped the whole plan. 

In a room radiant, not with one Christmas-tree, 
but with five, — a whole one for each person being 
the generous allowance, — stood a lordly fir, glis- 
tening with long icicles of glass, resplendent with 



HAMBURG AGAIN. 241 

ornaments of scarlet and gold and white. The 
stars and stripes floated proudly from its top ; un- 
mistakable cherries of that delectable substance, 
Marzipan, hung in profusion from its branches ; 
and at its base stood the Father of his Country. 
George, on this occasion, was a doll of inexpressi- 
bly fascinating mien, arrayed in a violet velvet 
coat, white satin waistcoat and knee-breeches, lace 
ruffles, silver buckles, white wig, and three-cor- 
nered hat, and wearing that dignified, imperturba- 
ble Washingtonian expression of countenance which 
one would not have believed could be produced on 
a foreign shore. He held no hatchet in his hand, 
but graciously extended a document heavily sealed 
and tied with red, white, and blue ribbons. 

This document was written in elegant and im- 
pressive English. A very big and fierce-looking 
American eagle hovered over the page, which was 
also adorned by the arms of the German Empire 
and of Hamburg. The purport of the document 
was that George Washington, first President of the 
United States, did herewith present his compli- 
ments to a certain wandering daughter of America, 
wishing her, on the part of her country, family, 
and friends, 

"A merry Christmas and happy New Year," 

and "all foreign authorities, corporations, and 
private individuals were enjoined to promote, by 
all legal means of hospitality and good-will, the 
loyal execution of the above-mentioned wishes." 
It displayed the names of several highly honorable 
witnesses, and concluded : — 



242 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

"Given under my hand and seal at my per- 
manent White House residence, Elysium, 24th 
December, 1876. 

" George Washington." 

And the seal bore the initials of the mighty 
man. 

The tree yielded gifts many and charming, but 
the sweetest gift was the kindly thought that 
prompted the pretty device. Though one had to 
smile where all were smiling, yet was it not, all in 
all, quite enough to make one a little " teary roun' 
the lashes," especially when one is very much 
"grown up," and so has not the remotest claim 
upon the happy things that, " by the grace of God," 
belong to the children'? Such scenes make one 
feel the world is surely not so black as it is painted. 

There was during the festivities, later, a bit of 
mistletoe over the door, which, in an indirect, 
roundabout way, through our ancestral England, 
was also meant as a tribute to America, and which 
caused much merriment during the holidays in a 
family unusually blessed with cousins in assorted 
sizes. When certain flaxen4iaired maidens felt 
that their age and dignity did not permit them to 
indulge in such sports, and so resisted all allure- 
ments to stand an instant under the mistletoe- 
bough, what did the bold young student cousins 1 
Each seized a twig of green and stood it up sug- 
gestively in a cousin's fair braided locks, when she 
was at last " under the mistletoe," and 

" I wad na hae thought a lassie 
Wad sae o' a kiss complain ! " 



HAMBURG AGAIN. 243 

None but the brave deserve the fair, and then — ■ 
lest any one should be shocked — they were pos- 
itively all cousins, and when they were more than 
five times removed I can solemnly affirm I think 
it was the hand only that was gallantly lifted to 
the lips of Cousin Hugo, or Cousin Rudolph, or 
Cousin Siegfried ; and, if I am mistaken after all, 
Christmas comes but once a year, and youth but 
once in a lifetime. 

At the theatre, Christmas pieces were given es- 
pecially for the children. The Stadt Theatre one 
evening was crowded with pretty little heads, the 
private boxes full to overflowing ; and across the 
body of the house a great, solid row of orphan girls 
in a uniform of black, with short sleeves and a 
large white kerchief pinned soberly across the 
shoulders. They wear no hats in winter, nor do 
common housemaids here. A friend in Stuttgart 
remarked innocently to a servant who was walk- 
ing with her to the theatre one bitter cold night, 
" Why, Luise, you '11 freeze ; you ought to wear 
a hat or hood." " No, indeed ! " said the girl, 
quite repudiating the idea, " I am no fraillein." 
They do not seem to suffer any evil consequences, 
never having known anything different, and per- 
haps the little orphans, too, are not so cold as they 
look. It may be they are made to go bareheaded, 
to teach them their station and humility, but it 
seems a miracle that it does not teach them influ- 
enza. The little things were in the seventh heaven 
of delight, and the play a bit of pure, delicious 
nonsense, — a fairy-tale with an old, familiar theme, 
— the three golden apples and the three prin- 



244 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

cesses who pluck them, and in consequence are 
plunged into the depths of the earth, where a fire- 
breathing dragon is their keeper ; the despair of 
their royal father, who is a portly old gentleman 
with a very big crown, and his proclamation that 
whoever, high or low, shall rescue them may wed 
them ; then the procession that sets out in search 
of the missing maidens, with the tailor, the gar- 
dener, and the hunter in advance, and the adven- 
tures of the three, until the hunter, who is the 
beautiful, good young man who always succeeds, — 
in fairy-tales, — finally rescues the princesses, and 
marries the youngest and loveliest, while the 
tailor and gardener, who have conducted them- 
selves in a treacherous and unseemly manner, are 
punished according to the swift retribution that 
always overtakes offenders — in fairy-tales. 

The action was extremely rapid, the scenery 
very effective ; there were perfect armies of chil- 
dren on the stage, some of whom danced a kind 
of Chinese mandarin ballet, and some of whom 
represented apes, and also danced in the suite of 
the Prince of Monkeyland, one of the rejected 
suitors of the princesses. In actual life the Prince 
of Monkeyland is, unfortunately, not always re- 
jected. There was a pretty scene when the sun- 
light streamed through the Gothic windows of an 
old castle, and red-capped dwarfs hopped about 
the stone floor, and played all sorts of pranks by 
the old well. And then there was the man in the 
moon, with his lantern ; and all the women in the 
moon, who were blue, filmy, misty creatures, bow- 
ing and swaying in a way that made the children 



HAMBURG AGAIN. 245 

through the house scream with laughter ; and 
these moony maidens were so very ethereal they 
could only speak in a whisper, and almost fainted 
when the hunter, who happened to be up that 
way, addressed them. 

" Speak softly, softly, noble stranger," they im- 
plored, in a whispering chorus, shrinking from him 
in affright, with their hands on their ears. " Thy 
voice is like a thunder-clap." 

It was certainly one of the prettiest spectacular 
dramas imaginable, with its innocent, droll plot ; 
and to see a good old-fashioned fairy-tale put on 
the stage so well, and to see it with hundreds of 
blissful, ecstatic children, was thoroughly enjoyable. 

Through the holidays social life here seems to 
resolve itself chiefly into great family gatherings, 
and the custom of watching the old year out is 
very general. One party of between thirty and 
forty persons, being only brothers and sisters with 
their children, was a charming affair. The digni- 
fied played whist, and the frivolous sang and were 
merry in other rooms. Tea and light cakes were 
served frequently during the evening, from the 
arrival of the guests until the supper at eleven, 
when the long table was brilliant with choice glass 
and silver and flowers ; and fresh young faces and 
sweet, benign elderly ones were gathered around. 
A family party can be a dismal, dreary assembling 
of incongruous elements that make one soul-sick 
and weary of the world, or it can be a tender, 
cheery, blessed thing. There are, indeed, many 
varieties of family parties. Most of the large 
ones are perhaps no better than they ought to 



246 0NE YEAR ABROAD. 

be ; but this gathering of a clan happened to 
possess the intangible something that cheers and 
charms. 

There were jests and toasts and laughter and 
blushes, and there was a wonderful punch, brewed 
by the eldest son of the house in an enormous 
crimson glass punch-bowl, — which, like the " Luck 
of Edenhall," " made a purple light shine over 
all," — and dipped out with a gold ladle ; and 
its remarkably intoxicating ingredients, particu- 
larly the number of bottles of champagne poured 
in at the last, I shall never divulge. 

The host rose just before midnight, and alluded 
briefly to certain losses, and causes for sadness ex- 
perienced by the family during the year; yet they 
were still, he said very simply, united, loving, and 
hopeful; he then gave the toast to the New 
Year, and they all drank it heartily, standing, as 
the clock was striking twelve, after which was a 
general movement through the room, warm greet- 
ings, hand-pressures and kisses, and suspicious 
moisture about many eyes, though lips were smil- 
ing bravely. 

Then came a walk home through the great city, 
whose streets were crowded full at two o'clock in 
the morning. " Prosit Neujahr ! Prosit Neujahr ! " 
sounded everywhere, far and near. A band of 
workmen, arm in arm, tramp along in great jollity, 
pushing their way and greeting the whole world. 
" Prosit Neujahr !" they cry to the young aristo- 
crat ; " Prosit Neujahr ! " is the hearty response. 
For an hour all men are brothers, and everybody 
turns away from the sad old year, and gives an 



HAMBURG AGAIN. 247 

eager welcome to the new young thing, whom we 
trust, though we know him not. Above the surg- 
ing multitude, and the hoarse, loud voices and 
impetuous hearts, and wild welcoming of the un- 
known, the starlit night seems strangely still, and 
the quiet moon shines down on the great frozen 
Alster basin, around which reaches the twinkling 
line of city lights. Beyond are the city spires. 
" Round our restlessness His rest," says some one 
softly; and so 



Prosit Ncujahr 




Cambridge : Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 



NOTICES OF " ONE S UMM EH. 



" No more charming story than this has appeared since How- 

ells's 'Chance Acquaintance.' 'One Summer' is a delightful, and withal sensi- 
ble, love-story, which one will be loath to stop reading until the conclusion is 
reached. The characters are exceedingly attractive, without anything of the 
superhuman or sensational about them, but full of life, vigor, and common-sense ; 
and a tinge of genuine romance spreads over every chapter." — New Haven 
Journal and Courier. 



"A delightfully fresh and spirited little romance. The style is 

graceful and spirited to an eminently pleasing degree ; and the plot is charmingly 
simple and interesting. The hero and heroine are drawn w.th rare skill and nat- 
uralness. Their acquaintance begins by an untoward accident, which sets them 
at loggerheads ; and the means by which their misunderstanding is cleared up, 
and they gradually begin to esteem each other, form the substance of the story, 
which has a heartiness of tone, and an apparent freedom from effort in its telling, 
that make it peculiarly attractive." — Boston Gazette. 



" One of the most charming stories of the season." — Chicago 

Inter-Ocean. 



" A bright, happy story, delightfully natural and easy. It is 
just suited for a pleasant afternoon in a hammock, or lying in a breezy shade." — 
Boston Traveller. 



" It is one of those fresh and breezy love-stories one meets with 

but twice or thrice in a lifetime. Altogether for charm of style, simpleness of 
diction, and pleasantness of plot, the book is quite inimitable." — Rocky Moun- 
tain News. 



" A story of great merit, both as a novel and a work of art. In 

reading it, one meets on nearly every page some delicate touch of Nature, or 
dainty bit of humor, or pleasant piece of description." — The Independent (New 
York). 



NOTICES OF "ONE SUMMER. 



" One of the best of summer novels. If we are not mistaken, it 

will be borrowed and lent around, and laughed over, and possibly cried over, and 
hugely enjoyed, by all who get a chance to read it." — The Liberal Christian. 



" This little book is one of the most delightful we ever read. It 

has made us laugh until we cried ; and, if it has not made us cry out of pure sad- 
ness, it is because our heart is very hard." — Christian Register (Boston). 



" The story is charmingly told. The fragrant breath of a rural 

atmosphere pervades its scenes ; much of the character-painting is admirably well 
done ; there is a freshness and vivacity about the style that is singularly attrac- 
tive ; and the whole action of the play comprised within the limits of ' One Sum- 
mer ' has a flavor of originality that commands the unflagging attention of the 
reader." — Boston Transcript. 



" It is a dainty little love-story, full of bright, witty things, which 

are related in a charmingly fascinating manner." — Christian at Work. 



" Fresh, airy, sparkling, abounding in delicious bits of descrip- 
tion. Its dialogues brimming with a fun which seems to drop from the lips of 
the speakers without the slightest premeditation, its interest sustained through- 
out : it is just the book to read under the trees these lazy June days, or to take in 
the pocket or satchel when starting upon a journey." — Newark Courier. 



" It is a clean-cut, healthy story, with no theology and no super- 
fluous characters. The hero is a manly fellow, and the heroine a sweet and wo- 
manly girl, with no nonsense about her." — Boston Globe. 



" It is a woman's book, — bright, fresh, and attractive, and more 

than ordinarily interesting. There is a decided dash of fun running through the 
story, and plenty of good, healthy romance, which never degenerates into senti- 
mentality. There is an engaging simplicity about the style, and a refreshing lack 
of the modern sensational."— Portland Transcript. 



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